"Everything go off O. K.?" he inquired genially.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Funeral, I mean. Mother went. Regular outing for her."
Miss Pringle stiffened visibly in her chair and began to study the pattern in the rug at her feet with an absorbed interest. Nora was conscious of a wild desire to laugh, but with a heroic effort succeeded in keeping her face straight out of deference to her elderly friend.
"Really?" she said, in a faint voice.
"Oh, yes," went on young Hornby with unabated cheerfulness. "You see, mother's getting on. I'm the child of her old age—Benjamin, don't you know. Benjamin and Sarah, you know," he explained, apparently for the benefit of Miss Pringle, as he pointedly turned to address this final remark to her.
"I understand perfectly," said Miss Pringle icily, "but it wasn't Sarah."
"Wasn't it? When one of her old friends dies," he went on to Nora, "mother always goes to the funeral and says to herself: 'Well, I've seen her out, anyhow!' Then she comes back and eats muffins for tea. She always eats muffins after she's been to a funeral."
"The maid said you wanted to see me about something in particular," Nora gently reminded him.
"That's right, I was forgetting."