"Well, it's Helen's affair."
"You don't understand," Miriam said again. She sat close to Uncle Alfred, and he patted her.
"Helen knows best," Lily said cheerfully, for she suspected what she did not know. "And we'll look after her. Come along, John. It's time we all went to bed."
"He'll grumble all the way home," Miriam said with a pout.
Rupert was still talking to the doctor: they had found some subject to their taste, and their voices sounded loudly in the quiet house. Helen had gone out to speak to Zebedee's old horse.
"Now, tell me what's the matter," Uncle Alfred said.
"Didn't Helen tell you?"
"No."
"Well," she swayed towards him, "the fact is, I'm too fascinating, Uncle Alfred. It's only fair to warn you."
All the strain had left her face, and she was more beautiful than he had remembered, but he now looked at her with the practical as well as the romantic eye, for his middle-aged happiness was to depend largely on this capricious creature, and for an instant he wondered if he had not endangered it.