“I don’t rightly know,” said Mr. Preemby after a moment or so of introspection. “I keep thinking of different places.”
“London,” she said. “If I could go back to study—before it is too late.”
“London,” he said, “it might be.”
He hesitated over his next suggestion with the hesitation that had become a habit, so accustomed was he to see his suggestions crumpled up and flung aside. “Have you ever heard of Boarding Houses, Christina Alberta?” he asked with an unreal carelessness. “Have you ever thought it might be possible for us to go and live in Boarding Houses?”
“In London?”
“All over the world—almost, there are Boarding Houses. You see, Christina Alberta, we might get rid of our furniture here, except for my books and a few little things, and we might put most of that away for a time—Taylor’s Repository would take care of that for us—and we might go and live sometimes in a Boarding House here, and sometimes in a Boarding House there. Then you could study and needn’t keep house, and I could read and look at things and make memorandums about some Theories I’ve thought of, and talk to people and hear people talking. All sorts of people go to Boarding Houses—all sorts of interesting people. These last nights I’ve been thinking no end about living in Boarding Houses. I keep on thinking of it, turning it over in my mind. It would be a new life for me—like beginning again. Life’s been so regular here. All very well while your poor dear mother was alive, but now I feel I want distraction. I want to move about and see all sorts of things and different kinds of people. I want to forget. Why, in some of these Boarding Houses there’s Chinese and Indians and Russian princesses, and professors and actors and all sorts of people. Just to hear them!”
“There’s Boarding Houses full of students in Bloomsbury.”
“Every sort,” said Mr. Preemby.
“One place that attracts me,” said Mr. Preemby, pouring out what remained of the beer, “is Tumbridge Wells.”
“Isn’t that sometimes called Tunbridge, Daddy?”