Some of the old fire had returned to his eyes, and his tongue had regained its once invariable knack of paying charming compliments.

In his excitement and delight he departed from his rigid diet, and, his wife's attention being focussed upon George Harley, punished the champagne with something of his old vigor, and revived as a natural result many of the stories which Joan and her mother had been told ad nauseam over any number of years with so much freshness as to make them seem almost new.
Mrs.Harley, wearing a steady smile, was performing the painful feat of listening with one ear to the old gentleman and with the other to the old lady.

All her sympathy was with her unfortunate and uneasy husband who looked exactly like a great nervous St.Bernard being teased by a Pekinese.
Joan missed none of the underlying humor of the whole thing.

It was amusing and satisfactory to be treated as the guest of honor in a house in which she had always been regarded as the naughty and rebellious child.

She was happy in being able to put her usually morose grandfather into such high spirits and moved to a mixture of mirth and pity at the sight of George Harley's plucky efforts.