‘Yes; at least, I thought so. But I was very sleepy. I thought also I heard Fifi howl.’
So, you see, there is no corroboration of my story, and if I dreamed it at all, or made it up, there is no one to whom I can appeal for confirmation of its verity. But there is just this little bit of evidence—namely, that though Legs had finished breakfast, he went on drinking cup after cup of tea. When Helen left us he explained this to me.
‘I woke with a mouth like a lime-kiln,’ he said—‘just as if I had been drinking that dreadful whisky of yours. I drank most of my jug, too, and they had to bring me more water to wash in.’
What happened last night, then, had been wiped clean off Legs’ brain again. Whatever it was that he had seen, that which made him stumble white-faced downstairs, had gone. But an hour or two later, while we were out playing croquet in the garden, some faint echo of it, I think, crossed him again. A telegram was brought out for me, which contained what I knew it would contain, and I handed it to him when I had read it. Then we went quietly indoors.
Just as we got into my room again, he said:
‘How odd that sensation is of feeling that something has happened before! When you handed me the telegram, I felt I knew what was in it. And during the last week she had been rather better, had she not?’
OCTOBER
THE business of the dining-room carpet (a case of conscience makes the whole world kin, so I confidently return to this matter) was settled more beautifully than I had thought possible. I told Helen all about it, and she said:
‘Thank goodness you tore the thing up! Dear, you are such a silly ass! There’s nothing whatever more to be said. You are, aren’t you?’
‘There’s nothing more to be said, I believe you remarked.’