“Oh, no,” responded Trix, answering the first sentence of the speech. Experience, long experience had taught her to seize upon the first half-dozen words of her aunt’s discourses, and cling to them, allowing the remainder to float harmlessly into thin air. Later there might be the necessity to clutch at a few more, but generally the first half-dozen sufficed. “Oh, no; no bad news. But Miss Tibbutt is not quite satisfied about Pia.”
That was true, at all events.
Mrs. Arbuthnot made a little clicking sound with her tongue, expressive of sympathy.
“Oh, my dearest, I know that term ‘not quite satisfied.’ So vague. It may mean nothing, or it may mean a good deal. And we always think it means a good deal, when it is probably only influenza. Depressing, but not at all serious if taken in time. And ammoniated quinine the best thing possible. Not bitter, either, if taken in capsule form. But I quite feel with you, and go-by all means if you wish. And take eucalyptus, with you to avoid catching it yourself. So infectious, they say, but not to be shirked if one is needed. I would never stand in the light of duty. The corporal works of mercy, inconvenient at times, and I have never been to see a prisoner in my life, but perhaps easier than the spiritual, except the three last. You always run the risk of interference with the first of the spiritual, so wiser to leave them entirely to priests. When do you want to go, dearest?”
Trix came to herself with a little start. She had lost the thread of Mrs. Arbuthnot’s discourse.
“The day after to-morrow, I think,” she said, reflectively. “I can wire to-morrow and get a reply.”
Mrs. Arbuthnot got up.
“Then that’s settled. Don’t look anxious, dearest, because there is probably no cause for it. Though I know how easy it is to give advice, and how difficult to take it, even when it is oneself. Though perhaps that is really harder, being often half-hearted. And now we will go to bed, and things will look brighter in the morning, especially if it is fine. And the glass going up as I came through the hall. Quite time it did. I always had sympathy with the boy in the poem—Jane and Anne Taylor, wasn’t it?—who smashed the glass in the holidays because it wouldn’t go up. It always seems as if it were its fault. Though I know it’s foolish to think so. And there is the clock striking one, and I shall eat more sandwiches if I stay, so let us put out the light, and go to bed.”