"What are you talking about? Is it a joke? A riddle? I give it up."
"Father—can't you guess, Kitty?—father has gone away. There is some other woman."
"No?" gasped Kitty. "Ha! ha! ha! ha!" and she shook with long peals of silvery laughter. "Well, of all the funny things! Ha! ha! ha!"
"Funny!" and Salvina looked at her sternly.
"What, don't you see the humour of it? Father turning into the hero of a novelette. Romance and red herrings! Passion and potatoes! Ha! ha! ha!"
"If you had seen the havoc it wrought, you wouldn't have had the heart to laugh."
"Oh well, mother was crying. That I understand. But that's nothing new for her. She'd cry just as much if he were there. The average rainfall is—how many inches?"
Salvina's face was stern and white. "A mother's tears are sacred," she said in low but firm protest.
"Oh, dear me, Sally, I always forget you have no sense of humour. Well, what are you going to do about it?" and her own sense of humour continued to twitch and dimple the corners of her pretty mouth.
"I told you. We cannot afford to keep up the house—we must go back to apartments in Spitalfields."