Out came the sun, which George greeted with a cheer. And Edwin, to his own surprise, began to feel hungry.
III
"I shan't take that house, you know," said Edwin, casually and yet confidentially, in a pause which followed a long analysis, by Ingpen, of Ingpen's sensations in hospital before he was out of danger.
They sat on opposite sides of a splendid extravagant fire in Ingpen's dining-room.
Ingpen, sprawling in a shabby, uncomfortable easychair, and flushed with the activity of digestion, raised his eyebrows, squinted down at the cigarette between his lips, and answered impartially:
"No. So I gather. Of course you must understand it was Hilda's plan to go up there. I merely fell in with it,--simplest thing to do in these cases!"
"Certainly."
Thus they both condescended to the feather-headed capricious woman, dismissed her, and felt a marked access of sincere intimacy on a plane of civilisation exclusively masculine.
In the succeeding silence of satisfaction and relief could be heard George, in the drawing-room above, practising again the piano part of a Haydn violin sonata which he had very nervously tried over with Ingpen while they were awaiting dinner.
Ingpen said suddenly: