I had purposely avoided using the words “he” or “him,” hoping that Dicky would not say anything to betray the identity of the “friend” who was returning from the wilds.  But I reckoned without Dicky.  Either he was so angry that he recklessly disregarded Mrs. Underwood’s presence or else his friendship with her was so close that it did not matter to him whether or not she knew of our differences.

“Oh, the gorilla with the mumps!” Dicky gave the short, scornful, little laugh which I had learned to dread as one of the preliminaries of a scene.  “I had forgotten all about him.  And so he really arrives on Sunday, and you expect to welcome him.  How very touching!”

Dicky was fast working himself into a rage.  Lillian Gale evidently knew the signs as well as I did, for she hurriedly began to fasten her cloak, which she had opened on account of the heat of the room.

“I really must be going,” she murmured, starting for the door, but Dicky adroitly slipped between it and her.

“Talk about your romance, Lil,” he sneered, “what do you think about this one for a best seller?”

“Oh, Dicky!” I gasped, my cheeks scarlet with humiliation at this scene before Mrs. Underwood, of all people.  But Dicky paid no more attention to me than if I had been the chair in which I was sitting.

“Beautiful highbrow heroine,” he went on, “has tearful parting with gallant hero more noted for his size than his beauty.  He’s gone a whole year.  Heroine forgets him, marries another man.  Now he comes back, heroine has to meet him and break the news that she is another’s.  Isn’t it romantic?”

Lillian looked at him steadily for a moment, as if she were debating some course of action.  Then she suddenly squared her shoulders, and, advancing toward him, took him by the shoulders and shook him slightly.

“Look here, my Dicky-bird,” she said, and her tones were like icicles.  “I didn’t want to listen to this, and I beg your wife’s pardon for being here, but now that you’ve compelled me to listen to you, you’re going to hear me for a little while.”

Dicky looked at her open-mouthed, exactly like a small boy being reproved by his mother.

“You’re getting to be about the limit with this temper of yours,” she began.  “Of course I know you were as spoiled a lad as anybody could be, but that’s no reason now that you are a man why you should kick up a rumpus any time something doesn’t go just to suit your royal highness.”

“See here, Lil!” Dicky began to speak wrathfully.

“Shut up till I’m through talking,” she admonished him roughly.

If I had not been so angry and humiliated I could have laughed aloud at the promptness with which Dicky closed his mouth.

“You never gave me or the boys a taste of your rages simply because you knew we wouldn’t stand for them.  I’ll wager you anything you like that Mrs. Graham never knew of your temper until after you had married her.  But now that you’re safely married you think you can say anything you like.  Men are all like that.”