‘I have lived retired pretty well from the time I married. My husband does whatever visiting is required of us.’
‘That is unfair to the world at large!’ cried Marjorie Bartrand, drawing up a chair to the table, where wools and silks lay heaped beside Dinah’s patiently progressing canvas. ‘Whatever hermit rules you observe elsewhere we shall make you break through them in Guernsey. I may look at your work? What intricate shading!’ She scanned the pathetic mass of Dinah’s stitches. ‘What a labour of love embroidery must be to you!’
‘It helps pass the time,’ said Dinah Arbuthnot. Wool-work fills up long hours that must else be empty. For I am not a scholar like you, Miss Bartrand, or like Geoffrey. And I only learnt the piano for two years at boarding school, not enough to play well.’
‘Still, you do play?’
Marjorie glanced across at a piano that stood open. A goodly heap of music scores lay on a neighbouring ottoman.
‘Not in such a public place as an hotel. The notes you see there are my husband’s. Mr. Arbuthnot sings, as I dare say you know. He was thought, once on a time, to have the best tenor voice in Cambridge. Some day,’ said Dinah doubtfully, ‘I may play just well enough to accompany him. Unfortunately for me, the most beautiful of his songs are in French.’
Marjorie bethought her of Geoffrey’s accent, and was silent.
‘You will have good opportunities of learning French in Guernsey, Mrs. Arbuthnot.’
‘Geff wants me to take lessons. We have a French waitress here in the hotel, but she speaks too quick for me, so do my husband and—and Mrs. Thorne. I only understand the sort of French we learned at boarding school—the sort of French the girls talked together,’ said poor Dinah modestly.