“I do,” said Randall. “But if you would all of you contrive to keep your heads, you may yet escape the gallows.”
“Don't!” she said sharply. “I thought at first you were going to be decent, and take it seriously. I might have known you'd only sneer!”
“Strange as it may seem to you, my love, I am taking it extremely seriously.”
She looked curiously at him. “Were you fond of Aunt Harriet?”
“Not in the least. But I infinitely preferred her alive to dead.”
“Why do you say it like that?”
“Because, my dear Stella, by dying Aunt Harriet has created a damnably awkward situation!” he answered.
Chapter Thirteen
The rest of Sunday passed uncomfortably. Randall left the Poplars soon after lunch, Mrs Matthews retired to rest, and her children, finding it impossible to occupy themselves indoors, went for a walk. Mrs Matthews remarked three times during the course of the evening that she felt quite lost without her sister-in-law, and when Guy, whose nerves were badly frayed, said caustically that he had been under the impression that life under the same roof with Harriet had become insupportable to her, she read him a lecture on the folly of exaggeration, and went to bed proclaiming herself not angry, but merely hurt. Stella then took her brother to task for having started a quarrel, and Guy, announcing that a little more from her (or anyone else) would be productive of the direst results, slammed out of the room. After that Stella too went to bed, and was troubled with bad dreams till morning.
Guy's praiseworthy resolve to go to work as usual had, he felt, to be abandoned. He came down to breakfast looking pale and heavy-eyed, drank a great deal of rather strong tea, and crumbled a piece of toast. His answers to Stella's remarks were monosyllabic, so she presently gave up trying to talk to him, finished her breakfast, and went off to interview the cook.