Edwin had the exciting, disquieting, vitalising sensation of being shut up in an atmosphere of women. Not two women, but two thousand, seemed to hem him in with their incalculable impulses, standards, inspirations.
"Janet wants to consult you," Hilda added; and even Hilda appeared to regard him as a strong saviour.
He thought:
"After all, then, I'm not the born idiot she'd like to make out. Now we're getting at her real opinion of me!"
"It's only about father's estate," said Janet.
"Why? Hasn't he made a will?"
"Oh yes! He made a will over thirty years ago. He left everything to mother and made her sole executor or whatever you call it. Just like him, wasn't it? ... D'you know that he and mother never had a quarrel, nor anything near a quarrel?"
"Well," Edwin, nodding appreciatively, answered with an informed masculine air. "The law provides for all that. Tom will know. Did your mother make a will?"
"No. Dear thing! She would never have dreamt of it."
"Then letters of administration will have to be taken out," said Edwin.