"I wish you would use names instead of pronouns. A good deal worse, I am afraid."
"And there's nobody to look after him—our father?"
"Certainly there is."
"Oh! I'm glad," Helen said, looking candidly at Notya. "We can't pretend to care about him—can we? But I don't like to have a father who is ill."
"If he had known that—" the other began, and stopped the foolish little sarcasm in time. "It is no use discussing things, Helen. We have to do them."
"Well, let us go to Italy," Helen said.
Mildred Caniper did not conceal her surprise. Her lips dropped apart, and she stood, balancing in a spoon the egg she was about to boil for Uncle Alfred, and gazed at Helen, before she recovered herself and said easily, "You are rather absurd, Helen, aren't you?"
But Helen knew that she was not. "I thought that was just what you were wanting to do," she answered.
The egg went into the saucepan and was followed by another.
"We can't," Mildred Caniper said with the admonishing air which sat like an imposition on her; "we cannot always do as we wish."