“Oh, you!—you’re all right. You can transfer your apprenticeship, and—er—well, I’m not the sort of man to be careless with trust funds, you can be sure. I kept that aspect in mind. There’s some of it left George—trust me!—quite a decent little sum.”
“But you and aunt?”
“It isn’t quite the way we meant to leave Wimblehurst, George; but we shall have to go. Sale; all the things shoved about and ticketed—lot a hundred and one. Ugh!... It’s been a larky little house in some ways. The first we had. Furnishing—a spree in its way.... Very happy...” His face winced at some memory. “Let’s go on, George,” he said shortly, near choking, I could see.
I turned my back on him, and did not look round again for a little while.
“That’s how it is, you see, George.” I heard him after a time.
When we were back in the high road again he came alongside, and for a time we walked in silence.
“Don’t say anything home yet,” he said presently. “Fortunes of War. I got to pick the proper time with Susan—else she’ll get depressed. Not that she isn’t a first-rate brick whatever comes along.”
“All right,” I said, “I’ll be careful”; and it seemed to me for the time altogether too selfish to bother him with any further inquiries about his responsibility as my trustee. He gave a little sigh of relief at my note of assent, and was presently talking quite cheerfully of his plans.... But he had, I remember, one lapse into moodiness that came and went suddenly. “Those others!” he said, as though the thought had stung him for the first time.
“What others?” I asked.
“Damn them!” said he.