But presently Barbara said uneasily:
"It seems extraordinary, your having no luggage like this, Alex. I don't know what Ada will think, I'm sure. I told her that you'd been living abroad for a good many years—I thought that was the best thing to say. But I never thought of your having no luggage."
"I hadn't got anything to bring, you see. I must get some things," repeated Alex forlornly.
"You see," said her sister half apologetically, "Ada's been with me ever since I married. She was Ralph's mother's maid, and perfectly devoted to him. I couldn't ever get that sort of servant to live out here, if it wasn't for that—she waits at meals, and maids me, and does everything, except the actual cooking. I know she's rather disagreeable in her manner, but she's a perfect treasure to me."
When Ada had brought in the lamps and filled the little room with cheerful light, drawing the blinds and curtains, Barbara looked again hard at her sister.
"Good heavens, Alex, how thin you are! and you look as though you hadn't slept for a month."
"Oh, but I have," said Alex eagerly, and then stopped.
She did not feel able to explain to Barbara the insatiable powers of sleep which seemed as though they could never be satisfied, after those ten years of unvarying obedience to a merciless five o'clock bell.
"I am glad to hear it," Barbara replied in a dissatisfied voice. "But I never saw any one so changed. Have you been ill?"
"Rather run down," Alex said hurriedly, with the convent instinct of denying physical ills. "I had two or three very troublesome abscesses in my throat, just before Easter, and that left me rather weak."