“Ah, but perhaps she’s come back from America,” said Mrs. Aldesey. “She’s a great traveller. What will you do with her if you do find her? Bring her back to Barney?”
“Hardly that,” he said. “There’d be no point in bringing her back to Barney, would there?”
“Well, then, what would you do with her?” Mrs. Aldesey smiled, as if with a return to their old light dealing with the theme, while, still in her nurse’s coiffe and dress, she leaned back against her chair.
“What would she do with me, rather, isn’t it?” he asked. And he, too, tried to be light.
“She’ll be mended then, you think? Able to do things to people again?”
“I’m not at all afraid of her, you know. She never did me any harm,” he said.
“Because you were as strong as she, you mean. She did other people harm, surely. You warned me once to keep away from her unless I wanted to lose my toes and fingers,” Mrs. Aldesey still smiled. “She does make people lose things, doesn’t she?”
“Well, she makes them gain things, too. Fortunes for instance. Perhaps if I find her, she’ll give me a fortune.”
“But that’s only when she’s ruined you,” she reminded him.
“And it’s she who’s ruined now,” he felt bound to remind her; no longer lightly.