“I’m very glad to see you and to welcome you to our home,” began Mrs. Griffiths with a certain amount of aplomb which years of contact with the local high world had given her at last.
“And my children will be, too, of course.
Bella is not here just now or Gilbert, either, but then they will be soon, I believe.
My husband is resting, but I heard him stirring just now, and he’ll be down in a moment.
Won’t you sit here?”
She motioned to a large divan between them.
“We dine nearly always alone here together on Sunday evening, so I thought it would be nice if you came just to be alone with us.
How do you like Lycurgus now?”
She arranged herself on one of the large divans before the fire and Clyde rather awkwardly seated himself at a respectful distance from her.
“Oh, I like it very much,” he observed, exerting himself to be congenial and to smile.
“Of course I haven’t seen so very much of it yet, but what I have I like.
This street is one of the nicest I have ever seen anywhere,” he added enthusiastically.
“The houses are so large and the grounds so beautiful.”
“Yes, we here in Lycurgus pride ourselves on Wykeagy Avenue,” smiled Mrs. Griffiths, who took no end of satisfaction in the grace and rank of her own home in this street.
She and her husband had been so long climbing up to it.
“Every one who sees it seems to feel the same way about it.
It was laid out many years ago when Lycurgus was just a village.
It is only within the last fifteen years that it has come to be as handsome as it is now.
“But you must tell me something about your mother and father.
I never met either of them, you know, though, of course, I have heard my husband speak of them often — that is, of his brother, anyhow,” she corrected.
“I don’t believe he ever met your mother.
How is your father?”
“Oh, he’s quite well,” replied Clyde, simply. “And Mother, too.
They’re living in Denver now.
We did live for a while in Kansas City, but for the last three years they’ve been out there.
I had a letter from Mother only the other day.
She says everything is all right.”
“Then you keep up a correspondence with her, do you?
That’s nice.”
She smiled, for by now she had become interested by and, on the whole, rather taken with Clyde’s appearance.
He looked so neat and generally presentable, so much like her own son that she was a little startled at first and intrigued on that score.
If anything, Clyde was taller, better built and hence better looking, only she would never have been willing to admit that.
For to her Gilbert, although he was intolerant and contemptuous even to her at times, simulating an affection which was as much a custom as a reality, was still a dynamic and aggressive person putting himself and his conclusions before everyone else.
Whereas Clyde was more soft and vague and fumbling.
Her son’s force must be due to the innate ability of her husband as well as the strain of some relatives in her own line who had not been unlike Gilbert, while Clyde probably drew his lesser force from the personal unimportance of his parents.
But having settled this problem in her son’s favor, Mrs. Griffiths was about to ask after his sisters and brothers, when they were interrupted by Samuel Griffiths who now approached.
Measuring Clyde, who had risen, very sharply once more, and finding him very satisfactory in appearance at least, he observed:
“Well, so here you are, eh?
They’ve placed you, I believe, without my ever seeing you.”
“Yes, sir,” replied Clyde, very deferentially and half bowing in the presence of so great a man.
“Well, that’s all right.
Sit down! Sit down!
I’m very glad they did.
I hear you’re working down in the shrinking room at present.
Not exactly a pleasant place, but not such a bad place to begin, either — at the bottom.
The best people start there sometimes.”
He smiled and added: “I was out of the city when you came on or I would have seen you.”
“Yes, sir,” replied Clyde, who had not ventured to seat himself again until Mr. Griffiths had sunk into a very large stuffed chair near the divan.
And the latter, now that he saw Clyde in an ordinary tuxedo with a smart pleated shirt and black tie, as opposed to the club uniform in which he had last seen him in Chicago, was inclined to think him even more attractive than before — not quite as negligible and unimportant as his son Gilbert had made out.
Still, not being dead to the need of force and energy in business and sensing that Clyde was undoubtedly lacking in these qualities, he did now wish that Clyde had more vigor and vim in him.