{61}
She must have been mad, she thought, to have committed herself so far to Charlotte; yet, turn about as she would in the ever-tightening circle of the problem, she could still find no other issue. Somehow, it lay with her to save Clem Spender’s baby.
She heard the sound of the latch-key (her heart had never beat so high at it), and the putting down of a tall hat on the hall console—or of two tall hats, was it? The drawing-room door opened, and two high-stocked and ample-coated young men came in: two Jim Ralstons, so to speak. Delia had never before noticed how much her husband and his cousin Joe were alike; it made her feel how justified she was in always thinking of the Ralstons collectively.
She would not have been young and tender, and a happy wife, if she had not{62} thought Joe but an indifferent copy of her Jim; yet, allowing for defects in the reproduction, there remained a striking likeness between the two tall athletic figures, the short sanguine faces with straight noses, straight whiskers, straight brows, candid blue eyes and sweet selfish smiles. Only, at the present moment, Joe looked like Jim with a tooth-ache.
{62}
“Look here, my dear: here’s a young man who’s asked to take pot-luck with us,” Jim smiled, with the confidence of a well-nourished husband who knows that he can always bring a friend home.
“How nice of you, Joe!—Do you suppose he can put up with oyster soup and a stuffed goose?” Delia beamed upon her husband.
“I knew it! I told you so, my dear chap! He said you wouldn’t like it—that you’d be fussed about the dinner. Wait{63} till you’re married, Joseph Ralston—.” Jim brought down a genial paw on his cousin’s bottle-green shoulder, and Joe grimaced as if the tooth had stabbed him.
{63}
“It’s excessively kind of you, cousin Delia, to take me in this evening. The fact is—”
“Dinner first, my boy, if you don’t mind! A bottle of Burgundy will brush away the blue devils. Your arm to your cousin, please; I’ll just go and see that the wine is brought up.”
Oyster soup, broiled bass, stuffed goose, apple fritters and green peppers, followed by one of Grandmamma Ralston’s famous caramel custards: through all her mental anguish, Delia was faintly aware of a secret pride in her achievement. Certainly it would serve to confirm the rumour
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