“But if he should come to wish to marry you?” he hazarded.
“I would not marry him if he were the only man in the world,” she said.
At the time she believed what she said.
CHAPTER XXIX
“A DANIEL INDEED!”
Dan Webster had never found Vine Cottage, Dulwich, quite so depressing as after he returned there from his last visit to Hastings. He had not gone straight home, but had made a short stay in London on his way.
The house was as usual, clean, and oh! most terribly tidy!
“A place for everything, and everything in its place,” ought to have been put up as a motto over the front door, Dan often remarked.
Mrs. Webster, in plain black cashmere gown, a white ice-wool shawl, and an immaculate widow’s cap, sat in her accustomed corner in the fireplace, knitting socks. Miss Linkin, her elder sister, sat bolt upright near the window, sewing. The two women were as much in their places as the furniture, Dan always said.
The yellow and white cat, too, was exactly in its own place on the hearthrug, opposite the middle ornament of the fender.
The Church Times lay upon a small table near Mrs. Webster’s elbow, together with the familiar big smelling bottle which had a collection of round balls in it in some mysterious liquid.