PART THE FOURTH
I
It was just two days before the end of Graeme's fourth week in Sark. His spirits were rising to the requirements of his work, and he was looking forward with quite novel enjoyment to a steady spell of writing, when his hostess startled him, as she cleared away his breakfast, by saying—
"It iss the day after to-morrow you will be going?"
"Eh? What? Going? No, I'm not going, Mrs. Carré. What made you think I was going? Why, I've only just come."
His landlady put down the dishes on the table again as a concrete expression of surprise, put her hands on her hips by way of taking grip of herself, and stared at him.
"You are not going? Noh? But it wass just for the month I thought you kem."
"Not at all. I may stop two months, three months,—all my life perhaps. Won't you let me live and die here if I want to?"
"Ach, then! It iss not to die we woult want you. But I thought my man said it wass just for the month you kem, and—my Good!—I haf let your roomss for the day after to-morrow," and her face had lost its usual smile and was full of distress and bewilderment.