“Sell it as a going concern? The Widgerys might come in. He’s hard, but he’s straight. Straight enough. They might like to come in....
“It’s never entered my head I wasn’t good for twenty years yet.... I wish the doctor wouldn’t think of operating. It won’t do any good.”
She repeated many of her phrases.
“I hate the thought of being opened,” she said. “I suppose—. Like those frogs in your book....
“Packed like a bag.... Never get it back again. Loose bits....
“Washing-basket or something to keep it together.”
Then her mind went off at a tangent to things beyond Christina Alberta’s understanding.
“Sneaked off and left me to it.... I wonder what he’s doing now.... Suppose.... Fancy, if it should be him that had to operate.... Operate....
“Children we were.”
She seemed to recollect herself and regarded her daughter with a hard inquiring eye. Some instinct in Christina Alberta told her to assume an incurious expression. But these words struck upon her mind and stayed there and germinated like a seed. Children they were, and he had sneaked off? Queer and yet according with all sorts of other imponderables.