"Not for two or three years."
"New machine?"
"No."
He smiled at me quizzically from his desk.
"How does the other fellow look?" he inquired, and to my haltingly invented explanation of my battered appearance, he returned the same enigmatical smile.
That day was uneventful. Margery and Edith came to the house for about an hour and went back to Fred's again.
A cousin of the dead man, an elderly bachelor named Parker, appeared that morning and signified his willingness to take charge of the house during that day. The very hush of his voice and his black tie prompted Edith to remove Margery from him as soon as she could, and as the girl dreaded the curious eyes of the crowd that filled the house, she was glad to go.
It was Sunday, and I went to the office only long enough to look over my mail. I dined in the middle of the day at Fred's, and felt heavy and stupid all afternoon as a result of thus reversing the habits of the week. In the afternoon I had my first conversation with Fred and Edith, while Margery and the boys talked quietly in the nursery. They had taken a great fancy to her, and she was almost cheerful when she was with them.
Fred had the morning papers around him on the floor, and was in his usual Sunday argumentative mood.
"Well," he said, when the nursery door up-stairs had closed, "what was it, Jack? Suicide?"