Something patronizing in the sentence jarred afresh. “You’d better go back to Blanche—it’ll be too late soon.”
“I wouldn’t touch Blanche with Bidlake’s barge-pole!”
The magnificence of the repudiation had its effect—it swamped in both the recollection that it was Blanche who had done the refusing.
“You don’t expect me to give up Gran’fer at his age?” she said more mildly.
“We’ll get him a minder—when I come back from Australia!”
Australia put the climax to her weariness. “Oh, yes, I don’t wonder it’s so easy for you to go.”
“It isn’t easy for me to go, even as far as Chipstone,” he protested passionately. “But it’s your grandfather you love, not me.”
“I love you both. Only think how old he is. It’s like quarrelling with a child. And he is in his second childhood almost, though I wouldn’t say it to anybody else. There are times when he seems quite his old self, wonderfully strong and sensible, but there are moments when he quite frightens me. He can’t bear to be crossed, and he forgets almost everything that happens nowadays.”
“Then perhaps he’s forgotten our upset!”
“No, that’s the unfortunate part. But we must just make a little joke of it. Down on your marrow-bones, Willie!” And she laid her hand on his shoulder with a last sprightly effort.