But the impression of her Daddy, desolate and broken-hearted and in danger, remained with her, terribly vivid. It clung to her. She got up in the morning anxious and depressed by it.
“I am not doing enough for him,” she said. “I am letting days slip by—and for him they must be days of despair.”
“Sure th’ ’Sylums ’nt so ba-s-at,” said Fay. “Sure yr overrating it.”
“But to live among lunatics and be classed as a lunatic!”
“They’ve bans play-them. Foxhill ’Sylum there’s buful ban. ’Ntainments nors-sorts treats,” said Fay.
Christina Alberta refrained from bad language.
“You getting ill ove’ all this,” said Fay. “You doing no good ’n Lun. Youffar be’r come dow’ Shore’m. The’s th’ouse spoilin’. In this las’ bit of fine w’r.”
For the October weather was holding out that year quite wonderfully, a succession of calm golden days, and the Crumbs had been offered the loan of a bungalow on the beach at Shoreham by a friend who had used it throughout the summer. They wanted to go down to it before the weather broke, but going down to it meant leaving Christina Alberta all alone in the studio, and they did not want to do that. But they meant to go to Shoreham. Christina Alberta, now that she had discovered Devizes, could not endure the thought of getting out of telephone range of him. London, she argued, was manifestly her proper centre. She could get down to Cummerdown Hill in an hour; she could keep in touch with everything. The Crumbs might go but she must stay.
Fay would not understand. She pestered.
About eleven o’clock Christina Alberta went to the Post Office telephone booth and rang up Devizes.