"You won't leave me for a moment?" she sobbed, in this mood finding his
sympathy exquisite and necessary. "You'll stay home--until--until--"
"Of course. I'll telephone Wicksam after breakfast. He can run the office
for a day or two. By the way Maria will be here this evening; Sally is
better. Joan and Tom and the rest will be here in about an hour. Tom and I
will attend to everything. You are not to bother, not to think."
"Oh, you are too wonderful--always so strong--so strong--how I love it. But
I'll never get over this--poor old mommy!"
But the paroxysm passed, and just as Mortimer was on the verge of morning
starvation and too polite to mention it, she grew calm by degrees and sent
him down to breakfast. The emotional phase of her grief was over.
CHAPTER V
I
It was three months later that Aileen, once more sitting in Alexina's
bedroom, after her return from Santa Barbara, where she had gone with her
father for the summer, said abruptly: "Dad is terribly cut up, dear old
thing. He'd known your mother since they were both children, in the days
when there were wooden sidewalks on Montgomery Street, and Laurel Hill was
called Lone Mountain, and they had picnics in it. Odd they both should
have had young daughters. Another link--what? as the English say.
Well--anyhow--he told me to tell you that he was just as fond of your
father as of your mother, and that you must try to imagine that he is your
father from this time forth, and come to him when you are in doubt about
anything.
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