"Oh, what should I do without you!" she cried. "I want to achieve something for your sake."
"You will achieve. And if you do not, there is enjoyment left. You inspire other people."
"With a kind of girlish nonsense that passes for wit. But older minds demand the real article."
"You have a certain brightness of talk that brings out the best in other people. That is a rare gift, I am beginning to observe. Put the novel by for a little while."
"But every time I take it out, it seems worse," she returned ruefully.
"Aunt Patty stumbled and fell about a month ago in her room. She was lame for some days; and I can see she isn't quite the same. Mother thinks it was a stroke. She is old, you know, and if she should be laid up! She clings to me so. You see, she misses Nora, who was running in and out, and the young girls who came here, and--oh, Ben, I am afraid I am growing stupid!"
Ben laughed and kissed her, and told her not to cross bridges until she came to them.
Then Theodore went to Washington for a fortnight; and Ben felt that it was hard for Delia to be bereft of that useful article, a man around the house. When Theodore returned, there was an imperative journey to the West. Already there were clouds rising that disquieted the wisest statesmen who were studying how to prevent any outward clashing. Mr. Whitney, with his _savoir faire_, was considered one of the best men to send on a _quasi_ political mission.
"You just drop in to supper every evening, Ben," he said with his Good-bye. "Dele has a head worth that of any half-dozen women; but I like to feel some one is looking after her. Mother is away a good deal."
The. had a misgiving Ben and Delia might want to marry; but they couldn't possibly spare Delia. So he was very friendly and obliging to Ben.
"Mother," oddly enough, was taking a great interest in the small end of the woman question, that was pushing its way in among other things. Mr. Whitney had been the most indulgent of husbands, and her sons had accepted household discomforts with no grumbling. But she took most kindly to the emancipation of women. She had a friend in Brooklyn who was lecturing on the subject; and she had vague aspirations that way herself. She was still a woman of fine presence and a fair share of intelligence.