Anthony Hope

“ To relieve the silence, she said, with a laugh:
“You see we poor married women have to depend on charity. Our husbands don’t care to walk home with us. Your father was bent on your coming.”
Harry laughed a short laugh: the utter darkness of Mr. Sterling’s condition struck through his agitation down to his sense of humour. Mrs. Mortimer smiled at him, she could not help it: the secret between them was so pleasant to her, even while she hated herself for its existence.
They had reached the meadow now, half-way through their journey. ”

“ There was one of them—Maudie—with whom he had flirted in his holidays; he wondered at that, especially when a relentless memory told him that Mrs. Mortimer must have been at the parties where the thing went on. He felt very much older, so much older that Mrs. Mortimer became at once a contemporary; why then should she begin, as she now did, to talk to him, in quasi-maternal fashion, about his prospects? Men don’t have prospects, or, anyhow, are spared questionings thereon. ”

“ Her husband was to dine in town that night, and, for sheer protection, she made Maudie Sinclair come and share her evening meal. The children were put to bed and they sat down alone together, talking over the party. Maudie was pleased to relax a little of her severity towards Harry Sterling: she admitted that he had been very useful in arranging the sets, and very pleasant to every one.
“Of course he’s conceited,” she said, “but all boys are. He’ll get over it.”
“You talk as if you were a hundred, Maudie,” laughed Mrs. Mortimer. “He’s older than you are.” ”

“ Most men do.”
Maudie allowed herself to laugh. Mrs. Mortimer saw the joke too, but its amusement was bitter to her.
“I like it,” she said gently. “Most of the men I know do it.”
“Your husband doesn’t,” observed Miss Sinclair.
“Poor George gets down from town so tired,”
She gave Harry the reply she had written (it was a refusal—she could not have told why) , but he seemed not to understand that he was to go. Before he apprehended, she had to give him a significant glance: she gave it in dread of Maudie’s eyes. She knew how sharp schoolgirls’ eyes are in such things. ”

“ Either from impatience of this topic, or because, after all, tennis was not to be neglected, he left her, and she sat alone for a little while, watching him play. She was glad that she had not played; she could not have rivalled the activity of the Vicarage girls. She got up and joined Mrs. Sterling, who was presiding over the club teapot. The good lady expected compliments on her son, but for some reason Mrs. Mortimer gave her none. Very soon, indeed, she took Johnnie away with her, leaving her husband to follow at his leisure. ”

“ The young men greeted him as an equal, the boys grudgingly accepted his superiority, and the girls received him much as though they had never met him before in their lives and were pressingly in need of an introduction. ”