"Such a slum!" said Bob disgustedly. "But she would do it, in spite of all that I could say. And rushed there, too, when he had hardly been dead a week. It was not decent, as I told her, to be advertising the sale two days after the funeral. But she is a peculiar woman."
"She is a Pennycuick," said Mrs Dalzell reprovingly. "She would not care to go on living in a house that she had ceased to have the right to live in. I should not myself."
"But she might have gone to another place."
"You must insist on her going to another."
"I am afraid my influence is not enough to persuade her."
"My dear boy, I am convinced that if you asked her to walk into a burning fiery furnace, she would do it to please you, without a moment's hesitation."
"She is that way in some things, poor dear; but in others—I may talk till I have no voice left, and she won't listen. And she was set on this scheme. She has a mania for—for that sort of thing. One would never believe that she was your sister. She would hate to live like other people. She simply loves to be a nobody. I can't understand it. You try your influence with her, will you?"
"Well, order a carriage for me, and I will put on my things."
He pressed her to allow him to escort her, which was obviously the proper thing. When she refused again, and went off, like any nobody, alone, he returned to his chambers, leaving Rosalie to the unimportant persons whose business it was to look after her.
Mrs Breen's house was in East Melbourne, and Deb directed the coachman to drive there first. She remembered the fiftieth baby that was but a few days old.