“All the same, if I treated a woman as my father treated you, I’d shoot myself.”
“Absurd you are. A man needs a fair conceit of himself to do that. And can’t a woman learn to have a life of her own?”
“Women——” began René, but his mother cut him short in a soothing voice that was almost a caress:
“Keep that for the young ones, my dear. I’m too old to be told what women are and are not, or to care. Shall we have the shortbread for tea? George is to be in with Elsie.”
“Who’s Elsie?”
“Didn’t I tell you? George is going to be married.”
“George is?”
“Yes.” Mrs. Fourmy gave a chuckle that for so tiny a woman was surprisingly large. “Yes, George has been almost as good at falling in love as you.”
That bowled René middle-stump, and he went out to bring in his bag and unpack the shortbread and the Shetland jacket he had bought in Inverness for his mother.
She tried it on and preened herself in it.