"And the other sister?"
"She lives at Poulton-le-Fylde, and her husband had to do with a newspaper syndicate. Quite amusing he was, Fay says, but very shaky as to the letter 'H.'"
"Would they like the children?"
"They might, for they've none of their own, but they certainly wouldn't take them unless they were paid for, as they were not well off. They were rather down on the Blackpool sister, Fay said, for extravagance and general swank."
"What about the grandparents?"
"In Guernsey? They're quite nice old people, I believe, but curiously—of course I'm quoting Fay—comatose and uninterested in things, 'behindhand with the world,' she said. They thought Hugo very wonderful, and seemed rather afraid of him. What he has told them lately I don't know. He wrote very seldom, they said; but I've written to them, saying I've got the children and where we shall be. If they express a wish to see the children I'll ask them to Wren's End. If, as would be quite reasonable, they say it's too far to come—they're old people, you know—I suppose one of us would need to take them over to Guernsey for a visit. I do so want to do the right thing all round, and then they
can't say I've kept the children away from their father's relations."
"Scotch people always think such a lot about relations," Meg grumbled. "I should leave them to stew in their own juice. Why should you bother about them if he doesn't?"
"They're all quite respectable, decent folk, you know, though they mayn't be our kind. The father, I fancy, failed in business after he came back from India. Fay said he was very meek and depressed always. I think she was glad none of them came to the wedding except the Blackpool sister, for she didn't want Daddie to see them. He thought the Blackpool sister dreadful (he told me afterwards that she 'exacerbated his mind and offended his eye'), but he was charming to her and never said a word to Fay."
"I don't see much sign of Hugo and his people in the children."