Mrs. Graham-Shute could hardly have been trusted alone with her husband with a weapon in her hand at that moment. For she saw that the rich cousin from whom so much was expected was looking as much displeased as only a sallow-faced and black-haired man can look. If William were going on like this, they might just as well settle at John-o’-Groat’s as at Wyngham. John Bradfield no longer pretended, however, to have forgotten the existence of his old chums.
“Dead, I believe, both of them,” he answered, curtly. “Did no good, either of them.”
“And what was the name of the other man?”
“Don’t remember.”
William looked at him incredulously, though he could not go so far as to contradict him.
His wife rushed in to the rescue.
“And what are we going to do to pass the time away between this and Friday?” she asked, with a great assumption of buoyancy and good spirits. “We ought to try to ‘get up’ something, ought we not?”
This question almost restored John Bradfield’s good humour. It was so characteristic of his cousin Maude. She was always “getting up” something, always at short notice, and always badly. It was her custom to forget some one or other of the necessary preparations, and to leave the work to be done in the hands of others. But she liked the excitement, the glory of being the prime mover of everything, however small, the feeling that she was making herself talked about; above all, she liked the “fuss.”
Lilith and Rose looked at each other. Their eyes said, “So like mamma!”