“Oh! Thank you so much, but——”
I felt I must, must be left to myself for the present. At the risk of seeming ungracious, I added hastily, “I can manage, really!”
Even though I’m not fated to be a sister-in-law, I should like this nice girl to like me. So I smiled up at her, and she put out a long, rather bony young finger, and just touched my coat-collar. I realized that I needn’t have “fussed” so over my “trousseau.”
“Ah! I daresay you’re tired, too.”
“I am, rather.” (Strictly speaking, I am ready to drop, though not entirely with fatigue.)
“Then I’ll send up some hot water presently, Nancy. (Come, Cariad!)”
And she left me to what I felt I must have or perish—the solitude of my own room, leisure to gasp over the series of additional shocks I had just received.
* * * * *
First and foremost, though it seems a funny detail to push itself in front of all the other things, there’s “Billy!”
To think that Still Waters should be “Billy” to anyone—even if it’s only to his mother!