"Strange, certainly."
"Does it mean anything in particular?"
He shrugged his shoulders almost impatiently and sighed.
"Oh no! It's the poor child's usual cry when she's here. She's got it into her head that the self she doesn't know is frightfully wicked, and makes me miserable. I've tried over and over again to convince her, but it's all nonsense."
He thought to himself: "She is coming back still full of this mortal, heart-rending jealousy, and we shall have more painful scenes."
"Well, it's your business to say what I'm to do," insisted Tims. "I don't think she'd have troubled to write if she'd found she could get back altogether without my help; but the other one's grown a bit too strong for her. Do you want Milly back?"
The remorseless Tims forced on Ian a plain question which in his own mind he habitually sought to evade. He leaned back and shaded his eyes with his hand. After a silence he spoke, low, as if with effort:
"I can't honestly say I want the change to happen just now, Miss Timson. It means a great deal of agitation, a thorough upheaval of everything. We have an extremely troublesome business on at the Merchants' Guild—I've just come away from a four hours' meeting; and upon my word I don't think I can stand a—domestic revolution at the same time. It would utterly unfit me for my work."
He did not add that he had been looking forward to receiving helpful counsel from Mildred, with her clear common-sense, seasoned with wit.
Tims wagged her head and stared in his face.