“How did you sleep last night?” he said, in a highly professional and very distinct voice.  Then he kissed her.

“Very badly, doctor,” she said, also very clearly, and whispered, “I lay awake and thought about you, dear.”

“I’d better give you this sleeping powder.”  Oh, frightfully professional, but the powder turned out to be another kiss.  It was a wonderful game.

When she slipped out into the hall she had to stop and smooth her hair, before she went to Lucy’s tidy sitting-room.

XXI

It was Jim Wheeler’s turn to take up the shuttle.  A girl met in some casual fashion; his own youth and the urge of it, perhaps the unconscious family indulgence of an only son—­and Jim wove his bit and passed on.

There had been mild contention in the Wheeler family during all the spring.  Looking out from his quiet windows Walter Wheeler saw the young world going by a-wheel, and going fast.  Much that legitimately belonged to it, and much that did not in the laxness of the new code, he laid to the automobile.  And doggedly he refused to buy one.

“We can always get a taxicab,” was his imperturbable answer to Jim.  “I pay pretty good-sized taxi bills without unpleasant discussion.  I know you pretty well too, Jim.  Better than you know yourself.  And if you had a car, you’d try your best to break your neck in it.”

Now and then Jim got a car, however.  Sometimes he rented one, sometimes he cajoled Nina into lending him hers.

“A fellow looks a fool without one,” he would say to her.  “Girls expect to be taken out.  It’s part of the game.”

And Nina, always reached by that argument of how things looked, now and then reluctantly acquiesced.  But a night or two after David and Lucy had started for the seashore Nina came in like a whirlwind, and routed the family peace immediately.

“Father,” she said, “you just must speak to Jim.  He’s taken our car twice at night without asking for it, and last night he broke a spring.  Les is simply crazy.”

“Taken your car!” Mrs. Wheeler exclaimed.

“Yes.  I hate telling on him, but I spoke to him after the first time, and he did it anyhow.”

Mrs. Wheeler glanced at her husband uneasily.  She often felt he was too severe with Jim.

“Don’t worry,” he said grimly.  “He’ll not do it again.”

“If we only had a car of our own—­” Mrs. Wheeler protested.

“You know what I think about that, mother.  I’m not going to have him joy-riding over the country, breaking his neck and getting into trouble.  I’ve seen him driving Wallace Sayre’s car, and he drives like a fool or a madman.”

It was an old dispute and a bitter one.  Mr. Wheeler got up, whistled for the dog, and went out.  His wife turned on Nina.

“I wish you wouldn’t bring these things to your father, Nina,” she said.  “He’s been very nervous lately, and he isn’t always fair to Jim.”