"It is curious that I, who knew nothing about Professor Thornton a few weeks ago, should all the time have been in communication with the nephew and niece of his dear Danish friend."
"Ja," said Tante, "waves—waves—wireless telegraphy, as always."
There was a sentence in Clifford's letter which struck Tante as being a remarkable thing for him to have written.
"I have become acquainted with a Miss Frensham," he wrote, "to whom I have given a letter of introduction to you—though she will scarcely need it, being, as she is, on a botanical errand to Ejnar and Gerda, and therefore to you. But I desired not to be left out in the cold where she is concerned."
"Well," reflected Tante, "that is a remarkable thing for an iceberg to say."
And she read the sentence several times in order to make sure that she had caught the meaning. The rest of the letter ran thus:—
"Dear Old Knutty,—Alan and I are coming back, and we shall come and find you somewhere and somehow. We have not been happy together. There is a shadow between us—that shadow which I always feared,—and he has something against me in his young heart which makes easy and close companionship impossible. We have both suffered. There was a man of my own age with his son, a boy of Alan's age, on board. I used to look at them with hungry eyes. They had such a good understanding between them; there were no shadows there. He was a great traveller, an ornithologist. And his boy thought he was the finest hero on earth, and worshipped him. I would not wish that; but I would only ask that Alan should believe in me again, as in the old days before—before Marianne's death. It will be good to hear your voice again, even if you do scold me for throwing over Japan. But, under present conditions, it is waste of money and waste of heart-fibre. Alan will be happier without me. Perhaps you won't scold me after all, Knutty. You are such a wise old Knutty; and I still think you were wise to send us in spite of everything."
"Of course I was wise to send you, my poor Clifford," Knutty said, as she read the letter over and over again in the quiet of her beautiful big bedroom, with its lovely views of the valley, the wood, and the grass-roofed houses. "Of course I was wise to send you—even if you came back the next moment. That doesn't matter. It is the starting-off which counts. My poor boy, I won't scold you. My good, gentle-hearted Clifford. You ought to have had a heart as tough as Knutty's. You would not have wanted to gnaw it then; no temptation then. My poor boy!"
She rubbed two or three tears away from her cheeks, and tapped the floor impatiently with her foot.
"Bah!" she said; "that Marianne, I never could bear her!"