Free 03 Mary Wakefield by Mazo de La Roche

His colour was rising. “What makes you so sure I’m going to die first?”
    “Men do,” said Mrs. Lacey. This was unanswerable. The Admiral looked downcast.
    “My mother,” said Philip, “put on the widow’s weeds after my father’s death and is never going to take them off.”
    “And quite right,” said Mrs. Lacey, and nodded several times as though affirming that she had every intention of doing the same, though she would not hurt her husband’s feelings by saying so.
    “After all,” Philip said reflectively, “men sometimes do outlive their wives. I’m a widower.”
    “Good!” exclaimed Admiral Lacey heartily, and realized almost at once that he should not have said that.
    Violet interrupted tactfully, “Do tell us how the children like Miss Wakefield, Philip.”
    “Very much indeed. Yesterday we all drove to a Mr. Craig’s along the lake shore and I bought a beautiful mare. We got along famously. Between threats and bribes I persuade the little rascals to behave.”
    Ethel asked, “Do tell us about these Craigs. I hear that they are very rich.”
    “I believe they are. By the way, Admiral, there’s another widower!”
    “Splendid,” exclaimed the Admiral, “and, by jingo, here comes a third!”
    Dr. Ramsey’s spare figure could be seen passing the window. Violet ran to let him in. He entered with a diagnostic look round, as if, though no one in the room was ill, they were, at any moment,likely to be. All three of the younger ones he had brought into the world. He had seen Mrs. Lacey through three accouchements. He had seen the Admiral laid low by sciatica. In humble postures all had lain on beds before him.
    He declined food but accepted tea. Philip took two more slices of thin bread and butter, turned them together and proceeded to eat them with relish.
    “I suppose,” said Dr. Ramsey to Ethel and Violet, “that you are delighted to have your parents home again.” He said this with a twinkle, as though it was understood that they had been up to tricks when authority was removed.
    “Oh, yes,” they answered.
    “It was the first time,” Mrs. Lacey remarked, “that we had left them alone and we did feel a little anxious.”
    “Not me,” said her husband, “I never gave them a second thought.”
    “Really, Richard, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.” But Mrs. Lacey laughed.
    “I don’t know what it is to be ashamed.”
    “Come, come,” said Dr. Ramsey. “Don’t tell me you are never ashamed.”
    “Never. Are you?”
    “Many a time.”
    Those present looked at him incredulously. He paid no attention to their expressions but quoted:
    “‘God knows I’m no the thing I should be,
    Nor am I the thing I could be.’”
    He stirred his tea with gravity and even melancholy.
    It was one thing for him to express such a sentiment. Quite another for his friends to agree. All hastened to disagree.
    “Well,” said Philip, “I’ve spent a good part of my life in feeling or trying to feel ashamed of myself. With stern parents and two older brothers and a sister I’ve always been hearing someone say, ‘Philip, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.’”
    “Your father doted on you,” said Mrs. Lacey.
    “And so does your mother,” added the Admiral.
    “I’m not so sure about that,” he answered. “I’m often a disappointment to her. I look so much like the governor, yet I can’t hold a candle to him.”
    “Ah, well,” sighed the doctor, “there is no doubt that man reached his highest point of excellence in morals, manners and intellect during the last two or three generations. From now on, there will be deterioration. If any of you are living fifty years from now you are likely to see a miserable world.”
    The two young women giggled.
    Dr. Ramsey turned abruptly to Philip. “I’ve been to your house,” he said, “to have a look at the governess but she was off somewhere. I hope she’s not one of the sort that is always gadding.”
    “It’s hard to say,” said