CHAPTER FIVE

“Teddy, did you ever hear me say anything about Gertrude Keith?”

“Why—­yes.  Wasn’t she the cousin who married Harry Everard?”

“Your memory does you credit.”  Mr. Farrington’s eyes belied his bantering tone.

“What about her?”

“Nothing about her.  She died, the year before we were married, and left Harry with this one daughter.  He has had a housekeeper since then; but the housekeeper took unto herself a husband, a third one, a month ago.  Now Harry has been having pneumonia and is ordered to southern France for a while, and he wants to know if the child can come to us.”

“What?” Theodora’s tone was charged with consternation.

“Isn’t it awful?  And yet I am sorry for him.  We’re the nearest relatives the child has except Joe Everard, and naturally she can’t be left to the mercies of a bachelor uncle.  What shall we do, Ted?”

For one short instant, Theodora stared into the fire.  Then she looked up into her husband’s blue eyes.

“Take her, of course,” she said briskly.

Mr. Farrington had never outgrown certain of his lover-like habits.  Now he stretched his hand out to hers for a minute.

“You’re a comfort, Ted,” he said.  “I hated to refuse Harry, for his letter was a blue one.  Will she be horribly in the way?”

“No; I sha’n’t let her,” Theodora answered bluntly.  “Don’t worry, Billy; we shall get on, I know.  Have you ever seen her?”

“Once, when she was in the knitted-sock stage of development.  She wasn’t at all pretty then.”

“How old is she now?”

“Hear what her father saith.”  And Mr. Farrington took a letter from his breast pocket.  Its creases showed signs of the frequent readings it had received that day.  As he said, he had disliked to refuse the request of his old friend; but he disliked still more to burden his wife with this new care which would be such an interruption to her work.  Moreover, the girl would be in his own way.

“Cicely is just sixteen now,” he read, “a bright, sunny-tempered child, and, I hope, not too badly spoiled.  You will find her perfectly independent and able to shift for herself; all I want is to have her under proper chaperonage.  I should take her with me; but the doctor has forbidden my having the care, and I hate to put the child into a boarding-school.”

Theodora laughed, as her husband paused for breath.

“The paternal view of the case, Billy.  Cicely is a nice, demure little name; but I suspect that the young woman doesn’t quite live up to it.  Still, I believe I would rather have an independent damsel than a shrinking one.  She will be more in my line.”

“But do you think you ought to try it, Teddy?” her husband remonstrated.  “Won’t it be too hard for you?  I can just as well tell Harry to put her into a school.”

For one more instant, Mrs. Farrington wavered.  Then she saw the frown between her husband’s brows, a frown of anxiety, not of discontent.