Mr. Palmer made these explanations as if he anticipated some opposition on Amelie's part, and he was pleased to find none.
'It seems to me much the most sensible plan,' she said; 'and, as you say, the railway will really interfere with us less if it is in Molesworth than if it was in Wyfold. I must just tell Bertie about it, and I will send you my formal consent this evening. I will leave everything connected with the sale in your hands.'
She pushed the maps away from her with rather a weary air.
'And how are you, papá,' she said, falling into her old habit of addressing him. 'I haven't set eyes on you for weeks.'
Mr. Palmer gave a moment's consideration to how he was before he answered.
'Well, I guess I'm a bit out of condition in the brain,' he said. 'From the business point of view, England is the most enervating place I ever came to. These directors and business men here are about as much use as nursery-maids. They go down to their offices round about eleven, and sit there till one. Then they eat a heavy lunch, and stroll back about two to see if anything has happened. Of course it hasn't; things don't happen unless you make them happen. So they light a big cigar, and go down to Woking for an evening round of golf after the fatigues of the day. Saturdays they don't put in an appearance at all. That's their idea of business. And it tells on me rather; it's difficult to keep up ordinary high pressure when you're surrounded by so many flabby bits of chewed string. I guess I'll go back to America in the fall, and get braced up.' 'It don't affect mamma,' said Amelie, falling more and more into her native vernacular. 'She just flies around same as ever. She's having a real daisy of a time, she says.' Mr. Palmer did not listen to this; he was pursuing his own melancholy reflections on English business methods.
'It reminds me of a poultry-yard,' he said. 'An Englishman, on the rare occasions when he lays an egg, has to flap his wings and crow over it, instead of sitting down to hatch it. Why, I suppose they've given fifty lunches to boards of the directors over this twopenny-halfpenny line of mine already. There was a luncheon on the formation of the board; there was a luncheon to celebrate their determination to set to work at once; there was a luncheon to celebrate their doing so. There was a dinner on the occasion of the cutting of the first sod of earth; they brought down some fool-sort of Highness to do it. They had a week at the seaside when the Bill passed through the House, and when the first train runs next month, they'll all go and have a rest-cure on the completion of their labours. What they want is something to cure them of their habit of always resting.' He got up from his chair in some impatience, folded up the maps, and stood looking at his daughter in silence for a moment.
'Say, Amelie,' he said, 'and what kind of time have you been having? All going serene and domestically? Bertie been behaving himself? Do either of you want anything? You look a bit down, somehow—kind of tired about the eyes.'
Amelie looked up at him; the 'tired about the eyes' seemed to be a wonderfully true interpretation of how she felt.
'Oh, we trot along,' she said. 'I suppose everyone has their bits of worries. Mamma has when she accepts three dinner invitations for the same evening. You have when your directors give luncheon-parties instead of doing business. We all have.'