“Supper’s ready,” shouted Lizzie Meggs, the “help” from the center of the dining-room. Lizzie had a strong voice and she believed in using it. It saved her many a needless step. She was nearly thirty and thought she was good enough for Oliver, or any other young man in Rumley. Her parents brought her up in just that way—with the aid of the movies.
At table the conversation quite naturally dealt with the advent of the detectives and the task that had been set for them by the universally despised Mr. Gooch.
“It’s all bally nonsense,” said Mrs. Sage, at Oliver’s right. “Your father will turn up one day and—Why, look at me. Didn’t I turn up? Didn’t I come back? Here am I as big as life, after twenty-three years, and dear old Herbert goes about the house all day long saying that nothing—absolutely nothing is impossible.”
“Well, you see, Aunt Josephine,” began Oliver, in his good-humored drawl, “Uncle Herbert did an awful lot of praying.”
“Morning and night I prayed,” said Mr. Sage earnestly. “I prayed, and then I prayed that my prayers might be answered. God saw fit to—”
“My dear Herbert, when a woman reaches my age she begins to appreciate the advantages of a husband. If she hasn’t got one, she begins desperately to look for one. I could have had a dozen or more if I’d been of a mind, but those were in the days when husbands were looking for me. I mean other women’s husbands. When it so happens, as in my case, that a perfectly good and reliable husband has been mislaid in the haste and confusion of youth, why, Fortune smiles, that’s all. It wasn’t your praying. I should have come back if you hadn’t prayed a lick.”
“Do not say that, Josephine. I have already begun to pray that you will never go away again.”
“Don’t let me catch you at it, old dear,” she warned. “I dare say I shall get jolly well fed up with Rumley, especially after Jane is married. Besides, I am living in the hope that you may get a call to Chicago or New York.”
“I shall never leave Rumley, Josephine.”
“That’s what I said about London.”