“I can’t send you an address. I have no idea where I am going next, but before very long you will see me again. I’ll burst in upon you some day, with a Paris hat on my head (and another in my box for a pretty friend!) and snatch you away from your fads and fancies, and carry you off to ‘Pastimes,’ to gloat over, all to myself! Don’t have anything to say to any presumptuous man who may try to lure you away. For the period of our lease you belong to me, and I am not going to give you up.
“Charmion.”
I smiled, wiped a furtive tear, and carefully folded up the sheet. It did comfort me to know that I had helped Charmion. I thought happily of seeing her again, of all the long interesting talks we would have together.
Incidentally I thought of our lease. If we paid a penalty, we could break it at three years.
Chapter Twenty.
Strange Conversations.
Billie is slowly recovering. He is sitting up in his cot, languidly permitting himself to be adored, waited upon by obsequious attendants, and fed upon the fat of the land. This is the period when outsiders cry gushingly to an invalid’s relations, “How happy you must be!” But as a cold matter of fact they usually feel very depressed and snappy and bored. This sounds thankless, but it is nothing of the sort; the thankfulness is all there, stored up for later realisation, but for the moment tired nerves are in the ascendant, and pay one out for the long-drawn strain.
Relieved from acute anxiety, Mr Thorold began to think of the cost, count up doctors’ visits, and sigh like a furnace; Miss Brown gave notice. “She wasn’t blind and she wasn’t deaf. She was aware that she was not giving satisfaction, and it would be better for both parties—” The general servant, who had been quite heroic during the time when work went on the twenty-four hours round, now took to banging dishes and muttering as she left the room. Old Miss Harding, having lost much sleep, and spent her few leisure hours in reading aloud to her small guests, exhibited a tendency to tears and self-pity. Mr Hallett, disappointed of a hoped-for holiday with his friend as companion, shrugged his shoulders, and inquired dismally: “What can you expect? Things always go wrong in this miserable world!”