Riseholme lingered on the Green that morning long after one o’clock, which was its usual lunch-time, and at precisely twenty-five minutes past they were rewarded. Out of the motor stepped Pepino in a very thick coat and a large muffler. He sneezed twice as he held out his arm to assist Lucia to alight. She clung to it, and leaning heavily on it went with faltering steps past Perdita’s garden into the house. So she was ill.
Ten minutes later, Daisy and Robert Quantock were seated at lunch with them. Lucia certainly looked very well and she ate her lunch very properly, but she spoke in a slightly faded voice, as befitted one who had come here for complete rest. “But Riseholme, dear Riseholme will soon put me all right again,” she said. “Such a joy to be here! Any news, Daisy?”
Really there was very little. Daisy ran through such topics as had interested Riseholme during those last weeks, and felt that the only thing which had attracted true, feverish, Riseholme-attention was the record of Lucia’s own movements. Apart from this there was only her own putting, and the embarrassing gift of walking-sticks to the Museum.... But then she remembered that the Committee had authorized the acceptance of the Elizabethan spit, if Lucia seemed ill, and she rather precipitately decided that she was ill enough.
“Well, we’ve been busy over the Museum,” she began.
“Ah, the dear Museum,” said Lucia wistfully.
That quite settled it.
“We should so like to accept the Elizabethan spit, if we may,” said Daisy. “It would be a great acquisition.”
“Of course; delighted,” said Lucia. “I will have it sent over. Any other gifts?”
Daisy went on to the walking-sticks, omitting all mention of the indelicate one in the presence of gentlemen, and described the difficulty of placing them satisfactorily. They were eighty-one (including the indelicacy) and a lawn-tennis net would barely hold them. The invalid took but a wan interest in this, and Daisy’s putting did not rouse much keener enthusiasm. But soon she recovered a greater animation and was more herself. Indeed, before the end of lunch it had struck Daisy that Pepino was really the invalid of the two. He certainly had a prodigious cold, and spoke in a throaty wheeze that was scarcely audible. She wondered if she had been a little hasty about accepting the spit, for that gave Lucia a sort of footing in the Museum.
Lucia recovered still further when her guests had gone, and her habitual energy began to assert itself. She had made her impressive invalid entry into Riseholme, which justified the announcement in the papers, and now, quietly, she must be on the move again. She might begin by getting rid, without delay, of that tiresome spit.