“Yes,” he agreed, “a damned bad business!”
“We’d better get him off,” she added after a moment’s pause.
“It’s all nonsense,” grumbled Sir Peter, “and I told you from the first you ought never to have let him marry that girl. Her father’s the poorest tenant I ever had, soft-headed, London vermin! He doesn’t know anything about manure — and he’ll never learn. I shall cut down all his trees as soon as I’m about again. As for the girl, keep her out of my sight or I’ll wring her neck. I ought to have done it long ago. How much does he want?”
“Let’s make it three hundred,” Lady Staines said. “He may as well be comfortable.”
“Pouring money into a sieve,” grumbled Sir Peter. “Send for the doctor and bring me the medical dictionary. I may as well see what it says about consumption, and don’t mention the word when Winn’s about. I will have tact! If you’d used common or garden tact in this house before, that marriage would never have taken place. I sit here simmering with it day in and day out and everybody else goes about giving the whole show away! If it hadn’t been for my tact Charles would have married that manicure girl years ago. Bring me my check-book. It’s nothing but a school-boy’s lark, this going to Davos. Why consumption’s a pin-prick compared to gout! No pain — use of both legs — sanguine disposition. Where the hell’s that medical dictionary? Ah, it’s there, is it — then why the devil didn’t you give it me before?”
Sir Peter read solemnly for a few minutes, and then flung the book on the floor.
“Bosh!” he cried angrily. “All old woman’s nonsense. Can’t tell what’s going on inside a pair of bellows — can they? Then why make condemned asses of themselves, and say they can! Don’t tell Charles I’ve written this check — he’s the most uncivil rascal we’ve got.”
CHAPTER IX
It was odd how Winn looked forward to seeing Staines; he couldn’t remember ever having paid much attention to the scenery before; he had always liked the bare backs of the downs behind the house where he used to exercise the horses, and the turf was short and smelt of thyme; and of course the shooting was good and the house stood well; but he hadn’t thought about it till now, any more than he thought about his braces.
He decided to walk up from the station. There was a short cut through the fields and then you came on the Court suddenly, over-looking a sheet of water.