"I thought you'd like to know as soon as possible what I mean to do," he said, addressing his father.
"I'm glad you've got your plans," his father said. "I've tried to make some, but I couldn't—couldn't."
"I want first to find out just how things are here," said Jeffrey. "I want to know how much you've got to live on, and whether these girls have anything, and whether they want to stay on with you or whether they're doing it because—" Jeffrey now had a choking sense of emotions too big for him—"because there's no other way out."
"Do you mean," said Lydia, in a burst, before Anne's warning hand could stop her, "you want us to leave Farvie?"
The colonel looked up with a beseeching air.
"Good God, no!" said Jeffrey irritably. "I only want to know the state of things here. So I can tell what to do."
The colonel had got hold of himself, and straightened in his chair. The girls knew that motion. It meant, "Come, come, you derelict old body. Get into form."
"I've tried to write you fully," he said. "I hoped I gave you—a picture of the way we lived."
"You did. You have," said Jeffrey, still with that air of getting nowhere and being greatly irritated by it. "But how could I know how much these girls are sacrificing?"
"Sacrificing?" repeated the colonel helplessly, and Lydia was on the point of another explosion when Jeffrey himself held up his hand to her.