She laughed.
‘I do that so often when I’m working at the catalogue in the evening,’ she said. ‘I look to see if it is time to go to bed, and then go on working. There isn’t any time so long as you are absorbed in anything.’
They mounted the steep ascent down which he had come a few minutes before. The wind was at their backs, ruthlessly blowing them towards Bracebridge.
‘And there’s the opening of the hospital wing to-morrow,’ she said. ‘I suppose you won’t be at the office in the morning at all?’
‘I shall just look in,’ he said. ‘Will you come to the opening and to the lunch afterwards with your brother? There is a table for some dozen of my staff.’
‘I am sure we should both like to. I love ceremonies and gold chains and personages. I’ve been visiting at the hospital, too, reading to patients.’
‘Have you? You never told me that.’
‘It wasn’t particularly interesting. But I am so sorry for people in hospital. I shall take a basket of bluebells there one day. Only it makes me feel cheap to read for an hour on Saturday afternoon, or pick some flowers. It is so little, and yet what more can I do? If I were rich I would spend thousands on hospitals.’
He was silent a moment.