“I wish that Varden had stopped with Mrs. Orr.”
“Well, he leaves us for good tomorrow.”
“Yes, yes. And I made him answer the letter and apologize. They had never met. It was some confusion with a man in the Church Army, living at a place called Codford. I asked the nurse. It is all explained.”
“There the matter ends.”
“I suppose so—if matters ever end.”
“If, by ill-luck, the person does call. I will just see him and say that the boy has gone.”
“You, or I. I have got over all nonsense by this time. He’s absolutely nothing to me now.” He took up the tradesman’s book and played with it idly. On its crimson cover was stamped a grotesque sheep. How stale and stupid their life had become!
“Don’t talk like that, though,” she said uneasily. “Think how disastrous it would be if you made a slip in speaking to him.”
“Would it? It would have been disastrous once. But I expect, as a matter of fact, that Aunt Emily has made the slip already.”
His wife was displeased. “You need not talk in that cynical way. I credit Aunt Emily with better feeling. When I was there she did mention the matter, but only once. She, and I, and all who have any sense of decency, know better than to make slips, or to think of making them.”