"I am going abroad for the winter," Aunt B. informed him. "I may, or I may not, return with the swallows. When Ferlie is in her Parisian convent and you memorizing the seventeen Latin names for the stomach, or some equally uninspiring anatomical organ, in Caius, no one will be needing a garrulous old woman who finds it difficult to keep her fingers out of other folks' pies. I suppose when I see you and Ferlie again you will both have quite a lot of advice to give me as to where I should ornament a bath-chair for the remainder of my days."
If Aunt B. had been able to face the English winter, or, if on deciding not to do anything so disagreeable, she had left an address behind her for regular correspondents to bombard with the Family scandals, her departure might not have affected Ferlie's whole future. As it did.
* * * * * *
Peter had come down for the Short Vacation that Season, and Ferlie had clung in damp farewell round the high collars of Martha and Mary, and returned to town to lay in stores of more advanced underclothing than had been permitted under their care in preparation for her departure to be "finished."
The fortnight after Christmas she spent at the home of Margery Craven, now a red-cheeked Diana of the hunting-field, collecting brushes and masks of more than legitimate four-footed victims.
Thence, an unintelligible letter from Peter recalled Ferlie. It was so unusual for Peter to condescend to anything longer than a telegram that Ferlie took the train home with forebodings she tried vainly to allay. Something had gone wrong, he said. Plans for everyone had altered and she was needed.
She reached their town house to learn from the parlour-maid that her father had been taken back to the Nursing Home; that her mother was with him now there, at the moment, and that Mr. Peter had ordered tea in the library.
Ferlie sought him without even waiting to shed her muff and furs. It was always rather dark in the library, but the uncertain shadows cast by the red lick of flaming tongues in the deep grate, where a new log was crackling, could not altogether account for an odd bleared look about Peter's eyes. He was sitting in a crimson leather arm-chair, his shoulders hunched, his hands on his knees.
"Hullo!" he hailed her unconvincingly; and he spoke as if he had a cold. "I couldn't meet you—had to do some important messages for Mother." Then he explained.
Even if Mr. Carmichael's second operation proved successful, he would never return to Burma; in which case Ferlie could not go to Paris, nor Peter back to Caius. It would be impossible for his father to put him through the prolonged and expensive medical course on a pension reduced by high income tax, increased rates of living, and the expense of interminable doctors' fees which they might have to meet in the future.