"What about the President's wife?" asked Bill.
"Why, _she's_ one of us!" cried Miss Fraenkel. "She approves!"
But Miss Fraenkel's mind was fashioned in water-tight compartments. She could not switch her enthusiasm from the vote long enough to appreciate this lapse from good taste. Her mind did not work that way. We would have to begin at the beginning and lead up to kissing as a moral or immoral act, before she could give it any serious attention. And when she asked Bill to join the local league I interposed, lest the harmony of the evening should be violated.
"We want your vote on another question," I said, and recounted the events of the afternoon. She listened with apparent attention, playing with a string of beads that hung round her neck. Long before I finished I saw she was ready to speak.
"I'll go right in and ask her if she'll join!" she said.
"Well," said Bill. "Come up here to-morrow. He's coming in to tell us some more. You'll meet him first and he can introduce you to his wife."
"That'll do first rate! I'm just crazy to get all the members I can."
The conversation rambled on irrelevantly after that, and we realized that for Miss Fraenkel at least, the story of Mr. Carville's life was not absorbingly attractive. We enjoyed her visit, as we always did, but her influence, in her present preoccupation, was feverish and to a certain slight degree disturbing.
The problem that presented itself when I retired that night was immaterial, perhaps, but new. I wondered quietly in what manner Mr. Carville would regard Miss Fraenkel. Doubtless I was over-exacting, but I desired to discover, in our neighbour's attitude towards the lady, some clue to his attitude towards us. I felt vaguely that his candour was not at all a mere casual fit of communicativeness of which we "just happened" to be the recipients. If this were the case, it would infallibly appear in his manner towards our voteless friend. It would be ... but no. My vanity did not carry me that far. The vanity of a man of forty is generally a steed broken to harness; it will not prance far into the unknown. I decided to wait until Mr. Carville decided the matter for himself.
The spectacle, while I was shaving next morning, of Mr. Carville proceeding sedately down Van Diemen's Avenue with his children, gave a fresh vagueness to his image in my mind. It was as though a hand had been passed over the picture, smudging the outlines and rendering the whole thing of dubious value. A model father! In my bewilderment I nearly cut myself. And yet, supposing, as I had been supposing, that Mr. Carville had set out with the definite object of contrasting himself vividly with his prodigal brother, would he not eventually take up the rôle of dutiful parentage? The extraordinary thing was that the model father should be also the artist.