“I earnestly hope so.”
“Your father is not an old man.”
“He is fifty-one, but he is not strong. I believe he has liver complaint. At any rate, I know that when, at my stepmother’s instigation, he applied to an insurance company to insure his life for her benefit, the application was rejected.”
“You don’t know anything of Mrs. Crawford’s antecedents?”
“No.”
“What was her name before she married your father?”
“She was a Mrs. Cook. That, as you know, is Peter’s name.”
“Perhaps, in your travels, you may learn something of her history.”
“I should like to do so.”
“You won’t leave us to-morrow?”