"She really seems to be having a good time," Grisel began, taking the thin sheets out of the envelope and throwing the end of her cigarette into the fire. "I'm glad too. She needed a change."
Barclay smiled at her. "Isn't it," he asked, "the first change your mother has ever had?"
She nodded. "Yes. I know you think we're awful, the way we treat her, John," she added, "but she never wanted to go away. I think her best holidays have always been when we were all off staying somewhere, and she had the house to herself."
"I don't," commented Jenny Wick, with a shrewd little grimace. "I think she likes best to have you one at a time—all to herself."
Oliver said nothing. It was the second time that he had been to the house since his return, but the first in which he had been there quite in this way—en famille—for the two brothers-in-law were there on the other occasion, and there had been things about the journey to Paris that he had not cared to tell them.
"Well, never mind that," he said. "Go on with the letter."
"'My dear Caroline,'—The first part's about—oh, about Caroline's landlady's twins—not very interesting. Let me see. Oh, here we are: 'We've been for a long drive in the Bois de Boulogne. You've no idea how different it is from Hyde Park, but it's very nice, just the same.'"
"Speaks the Islander," from Wick.
"'It is very cold here, colder, I think, than London, but it's clear and sunny. I feel very well, and in the last few days I have begun to get fatter; you'll be surprised to hear, Caroline, that I've had to let out my afternoon dress. I got a very nice piece of——' Oh, I won't read this."
"Yes, do," shouted Oliver. "I want to know what she got a nice piece of."