Catherine's fingers gripped her serving fork.
"I'll see, Spencer," she said, clearly. "Later we'll talk about it."
"If he has it, I want it," Marian insisted.
Charles's outbreak wrapped a heavy silence about the children. Catherine's spoon clicked in the bowl of salad dressing. How ghastly, she thought. It's our dissension, using them. Spencer had ducked his head; his nostrils dilated, his eyes moved unhappily from her face to his father's.
"Let's see, school opens on Wednesday, doesn't it?" She sought for safe words with which to rescue them. "You have to-morrow. Miss Kelly is going shopping for you. A coat for Marian----"
"Is she going to select clothes for them?" asked Charles, accusingly.
"Oh, she can do that. I've given her a price limit. The only difficult thing is shopping within that limit."
"I never had a bought coat, did I, Muvver?" Marian broke in. "Only coats you sewed for me."
"You're getting to be such a big girl." What possessed the children, anyway! Catherine heard Charles grunt faintly as if some huge dissatisfaction was confirmed. "And now----"
"You have more important things to do than mere sewing for the children."
"Yes." Catherine was flint, sending off sparks. "And I have money to bridge the difference in price."
Silence again, murky, uncomfortable. Finally the ordeal of dinner was done with. Charles offered, with detectable ostentation, to read to Marian. Spencer pulled his chair around until the back cut him off in a corner with his book on radio-practice. Catherine, after consultation with Mrs. O'Lay, withdrew to the study, where she opened her drawer of the desk, and spread out the array of bills. Not all of them were in yet; this was only the second of January, and a holiday at that. But there were enough! She set down figures, added, grimly--how few bills it took to make a hundred dollars!--and all the time, under the external business of reckoning, whirled a tumult of half recognized thoughts. Unendurable, that dissension should be tangled enough to catch the children in its meshes. Since Christmas day she had held herself remote, ice-enclosed. She had felt Charles try to reach her, felt his fingers slip, chilled, from her impenetrable surface, until he chose this method. As if he brandished the tender body of a child as his weapon, threatening to bruise it against her hard aloofness. Her hands dropped idly on the tormenting bills, and she let herself fully into that whirling tumult. Whatever happened, she must prevent another hour like that at dinner. If they must be opposed, she and Charles, it must be in themselves, not with the children as buffers or weapons. When they had gone to bed, she would go in to Charles.