“No!” said Pepino, who was listening with qualms of home-sickness to these chronicles.
“Yes, and the phlox in the kitchen garden,” said Georgie.
He looked at Lucia, and became aware that her gimlet-eye was on him, and was afraid he had made the transition from Abfou to horticulture rather too eagerly. He went volubly on.
“And she dug up all the seeds that Simkinson had planted, and pruned the roots of her mulberry tree and probably killed it,” he said. “Then in that warm weather last week, no, the week before, I got out my painting things again, and am doing a sketch of my house from the Green. Foljambe is very well, and, and....” he could think of nothing else except the Museum.
Lucia waited till he had quite run down.
“And what more did Abfou say?” she asked. “His message of ‘L from L’ would not have made you busy for very long.”
Georgie had to reconsider the wisdom of silence. Lucia clearly suspected something, and when she came down for her week-end, and found the affairs of the Museum entirely engrossing the whole of Riseholme, his reticence, if he persisted in it, would wear a very suspicious aspect.
“Oh yes, the Museum,” he said with feigned lightness. “Abfou told us to start a museum, and it’s getting on splendidly. That tithe-barn of Colonel Boucher’s. And Daisy’s given all the things she was going to make into a rockery, and I’m giving my Roman glass and two sketches, and Colonel Boucher his Samian ware and an ordnance map, and there are lots of fossils and some coins.”
“And a committee?” asked Lucia.
“Yes. Daisy and Mrs. Boucher and I, and we co-opted Robert,” he said with affected carelessness.