“What’s your program now?” asked Henderson.
“You’ll find vegetation a bit of a bore, won’t you?” Fayre settled himself luxuriously in his chair.
“I don’t know about that. I’ve done my share of hard work and had one go of fever too many and I shan’t be sorry to settle down. I shall loaf round for a bit, looking up old friends and that sort of thing, and then take a little place in the country with a spare bedroom or two and a bit of fishing. I might perpetrate a book. Like most of us who’ve been in the East, I’ve got ideas I shouldn’t mind airing.”
They chatted desultorily until Mrs. Henderson came back with Mrs. Benson, a plump, voluble little woman who seemed only too pleased to find a fresh audience for her reminiscences.
“It’s funny you should mention Baxter,” she said as she settled herself comfortably by the fire. “I turned up an old photograph of him only yesterday in a group taken just before I left the hospital. I’m afraid he made a mess of things, poor fellow.”
“Do you know if he’s alive? Henderson seems to think that he died.”
“He went to pieces after his wife left him. He took to drink, I believe, and ended by drinking himself to death. He was a fool ever to have married her.”
“There was a certain amount of gossip, I hear, over that affair.”
“Gossip about her. She was a bad lot from the beginning. We nurses knew a thing or two, both about her and her great friend, a girl called Philips. They and Baxter and a man called Gregg were always about together and they got themselves a good deal talked about. We were all surprised when Baxter married her, not on his account, he was dotty about her, but because we all thought she was after bigger game. She was the sort of girl who’s set on making a good marriage and generally succeeds in the end, too. Usually, she hooks a rich patient after she’s left the hospital, and both she and the Philips girl were clever enough to do it.”
“Was Gregg in love with either of them?” asked Fayre.