"You can go back to the farm, anyhow," she said. "I asked Doctor Darby, especially, and he said so. He wants me to go along with you and take Aunt Lucile. Just for a week or so. Is there any sort of place with a roof over it where we could stay?"
He said, "I guess that could be managed." But his tone was so absent and somber that she looked at him in sharp concern.
"You didn't mean that the farm was your nightmare, did you?" she asked.
"Has something gone terribly wrong out there?"
"Things have gone just the way I suppose anybody but a fool would have known they would. Not worse than that, I guess."
He got up then and went over to the sideboard, coming back with a decanter of old brandy and a pair of big English glasses. She declined hers as unobtrusively as possible, just with a word and a faint shake of the head. But it was enough to make him look at her.
"You didn't drink anything at dinner, either, did you?" he asked.
She flushed as she said, "I don't think I'm drinking, at all, just now."
"Being an example to anybody?" he asked suspiciously.
She smiled at that and patted his hand. "Oh, no, my dear. I've enough to do to be an example to myself. I liked the way it was out at the Corbetts'. They've gone bone-dry. And,—oh, please don't think that I'm a prig—I am a little better without it—just now, anyway. Tell me what's gone wrong at the farm."
"This is wonderful stuff," he said, cupping the fragile glass in his two hands and inhaling the bouquet from the precious liquor in the bottom of it. "It's good for nightmares, at any rate." After a sip or two, he attempted to answer her question.