“I know I did. Oh yes, I daresay it will all be right enough. I am going to make out a list of all the friends I remember, and inquire about them by degrees. Some day soon we must drive over to Fotherley, Blanchie. Just think, I have never even seen your dear grandfather’s grave! I am tired to-night, and everything seems wrong when one is tired.”
Things did brighten up even by the next morning. The weather, though cold, was clear and bracing; very different from the murkiness of London, which had been peculiarly trying to nerves and lungs accustomed to the pure smokeless air of southern France. And the work at Pinnerton Lodge was already begun. It was most interesting to go all over the house again with the delightful sense of proprietorship, planning which rooms should be for what and for whom; how the old furniture would “come in,” and what it would be necessary to add to it. And an occasional day in London, with definite shopping for its object, made Stasy allow that for some things, and in some ways, the great city was not altogether a bad place after all.
Still, though they were not “dull” in the sense of having nothing to do, and feeling in consequence listless and dreary, the little family felt curiously lonely.
Miss Halliday was no gossip—that is to say, she drew the line at the concerns of her visitors, and sternly refused to tell any of her cronies anything about them. And though this rule of hers was well known, still it added a slight element of mystery to her present lodgers, which, in reality, led to more gossip about them than they were in the least aware of. It was not often that visitors stayed so long at Miss Halliday’s; as a rule, her rooms were merely taken as a half-way house for a very few days, by families pitching their tents in the now sought-after little town. And for some time no one knew anything about Pinnerton Lodge, as the distance between it and Blissmore was sufficient, in winter especially, to prevent much passing by. Added to which one of the good qualities of the Otterson and Bewley firm was discretion carried to the limits of surliness, in their determination that all knowledge of their clients’ affairs should be confined to the office itself.
So Blanche and Stasy walked up and down the Blissmore streets, intent on such amount of shopping as Mrs Derwent would allow them to do there, or marched out bravely to Pinnerton and back, however cold it was, rejoicing in the “delightful English freedom,” as Stasy called it, which made it possible for them to do so without any breach of accepted rules, innocent of the remarks and comments their appearance in public called forth.
“I can’t make them out,” said the wife of one of the doctors—Blissmore now rejoiced in four or five, though formerly one and an assistant had been all that was required—the wife, unluckily, of the doctor whose house in the High Street was nearest to Miss Halliday’s. “I can’t make them out. Do they never mean to know anybody or tell who they are? People who have come from abroad should tell all about themselves, or how can they expect any one to notice them.”
Which was, to say the least, a begging-the-question kind of reproach, seeing that in no way had the Derwent family expected, or seemed to expect, the “notice” of Mrs Burgess or any of her coterie!
But it is not only the brave that chance sometimes favours. It favours the idle and inquisitive and the busy-bodies too, now and then. And I am afraid, without judging her too harshly, Mrs Burgess might come under these heads.
The chance was that of Stasy getting a sore throat. It was not a very bad one, but she was rather subject to sore throats, and the change of climate made Mrs Derwent extra cautious about her. It got suddenly worse one evening, and though Stasy was not cowardly or impatient when she was ill, she had to own to feeling pretty bad, and depressing visions of a quinsy she had had on one or two occasions rose before her.
“We must not trifle with it,” her mother decided, and Miss Halliday was summoned and consulted as to sending for the doctor. Her own doctor, the one of oldest standing in the place, was unfortunately away for a few days, she happened to know. But there were others. Mr Meyrick was considered second best, but he lived quite at the other side of the town, and—