Miss Entwhistle started. 'To-morrow?' she repeated. 'Really? Does he? I mean, ought he? Somehow I had supposed Saturday. The week-end somehow suggests Saturdays to me.'
'No. He—we,' Lucy corrected herself, 'come down on Fridays. He's sure to be down in time for lunch.'
'Oh is he?' said Miss Entwhistle, thinking a great many things very quickly. 'Well, if it is his habit,' she went on, 'I am sure too that he will. Do you remember how we set our clocks by him when he came to tea in Eaton Terrace?'
Lucy smiled, and the remembrance of those days of love, and of all his dear, funny ways, flooded her heart and washed out for a moment the honeymoon, the birthday, everything that had happened since.
Miss Entwhistle couldn't but notice the unmistakable love-look. 'Oh I'm so glad you love each other so much,' she said with all her heart. 'You know, Lucy, I was afraid that perhaps this house——'
She stopped, because adequately to discuss The Willows in all its aspects needed, she felt, perfect health on both sides.
'Yes, I don't think a house matters when people love each other,' said Lucy.
'Not a bit. Not a bit,' agreed Miss Entwhistle. Not even, she thought robustly, when it was a house with a recent dreadful history. Love—she hadn't herself experienced it, but what was an imagination for except to imagine with?—love was so strong an armour that nothing could reach one and hurt one through it. That was why lovers were so selfish. They sat together inside their armour perfectly safe, entirely untouchable, completely uninterested in what happened to the rest of the world. 'Besides,' she went on aloud, 'you'll alter it.'
Lucy's smile at that was a little sickly. Aunt Dot's optimism seemed to her extravagant. She was unable to see herself altering The Willows.
'You'll have all your father's furniture and books to put about,' said Aunt Dot, continuing in optimism. 'Why, you'll be able to make the place really quite—quite——'