“Yes, I confess I like a bit of salmon myself,” said Regina, rather tamely.
Julia looked up. Something in her mother’s tone struck her as unusual. “Don’t you feel well to-day, mother?” she asked.
Alfred looked up sharply. “Don’t you feel all right?”
“Yes, quite all right,” she replied; “I think I want to get away.”
“You’re over-doing it,” said Alfred in genial yet uneasy tones. “Why don’t you take a little rest—not a holiday, but a rest from your outside work? You’re over-doing it.”
“I think so too,” said Regina. “I went down to the offices to-day and told them to prepare my resignation as President of the S.R.W.”
“Mother!” cried Julia in sharp staccato accents.
“Oh, come, come, you needn’t say ‘mother’ in that tone. It is the best bit of news I have heard for a long time. My dear, I look toward you—Stay, we’ll have a glass of fizz on the strength of it. Margaret, here, take my keys, go down to the cellar, look in bin marked number three and bring up a bottle.”
“Large or small, sir?”
“Oh, a large one.”