“Georgie, come to the fence a minute,” said Mrs. Quantock. “I want to speak to you.”
Georgie, longing for a little gossip, let go of the handle of his roller, which, suddenly released, gave a loud squeak and rapped him smartly on the elbow.
“Tarsome thing!” said Georgie.
He went to the fence and, being tall, could look over it. There was Mrs. Quantock angrily poking Lucia’s note into the flower-bed she had been weeding.
“What is it?” said Georgie. “Shall I like it?”
His face red and moist with exertion, appearing just over the top of the fence, looked like the sun about to set below the flat gray horizon of the sea.
“I don’t know if you’ll like it,” said Daisy, “but it’s your Lucia. I sent her a little note of condolence about the aunt, and she says it has been a terrible blow to Pepino and herself. They hoped that the old lady might have been spared them a few years yet.”
“No!” said Georgie, wiping the moisture off his forehead with the back of one of his beautiful pearl-gray gloves.
“But she did,” said the infuriated Daisy, “they were her very words. I could show you if I hadn’t dug it in. Such a pack of nonsense! I hope that long before I’ve been bedridden for seven years, somebody will strangle me with a bootlace, or anything handy. Why does Lucia pretend to be sorry? What does it all mean?”
Georgie had long been devoted henchman to Lucia (Mrs. Lucas, wife of Philip Lucas, and so Lucia), and though he could criticize her in his mind, when he was alone in his bed or his bath, he always championed her in the face of the criticism of others. Whereas Daisy criticized everybody everywhere....