As soon as she began speaking, the sound of her own voice reassured her. There could be nothing in it. The replies also were typical, and in the buff of conversation her fears vanished.
“You needn’t go though—” began her hostess.
“I needn’t, but hadn’t I better? It’s really getting rather serious. We let chance after chance slip, and the end of it is we shall be bundled out bag and baggage into the street. We don’t know what we want, that’s the mischief with us—”
“No, we have no real ties,” said Helen, helping herself to toast.
“Shan’t I go up to town today, take the house if it’s the least possible, and then come down by the afternoon train tomorrow, and start enjoying myself. I shall be no fun to myself or to others until this business is off my mind.”
“But you won’t do anything rash, Margaret?”
“There’s nothing rash to do.”
“Who are the Wilcoxes?” said Tibby, a question that sounds silly, but was really extremely subtle, as his aunt found to her cost when she tried to answer it. “I don’t manage the Wilcoxes; I don’t see where they come in.”
“No more do I,” agreed Helen. “It’s funny that we just don’t lose sight of them. Out of all our hotel acquaintances, Mr. Wilcox is the only one who has stuck. It is now over three years, and we have drifted away from far more interesting people in that time.
“Interesting people don’t get one houses.”