She had thought it must
be the heat or business worries or something. He had not eaten very
much, and he had seemed too tired to talk when he got home each
evening. She had begged him to take a few days' rest. That had been the
only occasion in the whole of the last week when she had heard him
laugh; and it had been such a horrid, ugly sort of laugh that she
wished she hadn't.
He had said that if he stayed away from the office for some time to
come it would mean love in a cottage for them for the rest of their
lives--and not a summer cottage at Tuxedo at that. "'My dear child,'"
he had gone on, "and you know when Bailey calls me that," said Sybil,
"it means that there is something the matter; for, as a rule, he never
calls me anything but my name, or baby, or something like that."
Which gave Ruth a little shock of surprise. Somehow the idea of the
dignified Bailey addressing his wife as baby startled her. She was
certainly learning these days that she did not know people as
completely as she had supposed. There seemed to be endless sides to
people's characters which had never come under her notice. A sudden
memory of Kirk on that fateful afternoon came to her and made her
wince.
Mrs. Bailey continued: "'My dear child,' he went on, 'this week is
about the most important week you and I are ever likely to live
through.
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