“But it is impossible,” she said. “Why, I know Stamford Hill; an aunt of mine lived there once. She had a house standing in its own grounds.” She glanced at me to see if this fact impressed me. “But there is no country there. I’m certain of it. I used to spend my Sundays with Aunt Jane. The last old house was pulled down years ago. Six streets of villas stand on the site. I’ve seen them.”
But Chaytor babbled on of his lilac woman.
“It’s all nonsense,” Minnie said more clinchingly. “You dreamt it—I believe you’re asleep more than half your time. And even if you weren’t asleep, everyone knows that consumptives have queer fancies. It’s no good wriggling on your chair like that when you know very well that the doctor told you ever so long ago that you had only one lung.”
“It was real,” he insisted, flinching a little at her candor. “So real that I seemed to have been there before.”
“I know,” I said soothingly. “We all have that feeling sometimes. Bloater paste serves me like that; makes me think of a red-haired fellow in a punt. These things are odd. Murphy used to feel the same over ripe plums—only his was an empty barn and a thunderstorm.”
I’ve always tried hard to be practical, you know. I’m convinced that money is the secret of all happiness—though I’ve never had the peculiar quality that makes it. For once I thought that I’d be business-like.
“If you should be right,” I said to Chaytor, “there is a fortune in it. I think I know a man who would finance us. By what you say the land is ripe for development; we could cut it up into estates—plant shrubs and rows of horse chestnuts—you know the sort of thing. We’d call it the Marlowe estate, after the Inn.”
Chaytor flinched; then he said with a droll smile:
“If I thought you meant that I would cut my throat rather than take you there. But you never were a money-grubber, old fellow. Come and see for yourself. Everything will be as I have told you—the bridge, the empty house, the little wood. And the woman at the dairy—we’ll get her to give us some milk.”
Minnie was staring at him with round, cold eyes. Her elbows were on the table.