Alys looked up from her letter to Miss Winstanley in surprise at the inquiry.
“I?” she said; “oh dear, no. I leave all that to you of course. I have not answered Arthur’s letter at all; there seems to have been so much to do this last day or two.”
Her brother seemed pleased and yet not pleased.
“It is just as well. I don’t think I shall tell him either. We’ll take him by surprise—drive over to see him in his bachelor quarters at the farm-house the day after we get home, eh?”
“Oh, yes, do,” exclaimed Alys, eagerly. “We’ll say we have come to luncheon! What fun it will be; for Arthur has about as much notion of housekeeping as the man in the moon, and he will look so foolish if he has to tell us he has nothing in the house but eggs!”
“You don’t suppose he has been living on nothing but eggs all this time, do you?”
“He may have had a chop now and then for a change,” observed Alys; “but from what he said in his letter, I don’t fancy he has had to depend much on himself. He seems to have been a great deal with his friends at the Rectory.”
There was intention in the allusion. Alys stole a look at her brother’s face to see if the effect was what she half anticipated. Yes; the amusement had all died put of his expression, to be replaced by annoyance and anxiety. Alys’s conscience smote her for trying experiments at the cost of her brother’s equanimity.
“Poor Laurence!” she reflected. “I wish he would not worry himself so much about other people’s affairs. Arthur is quite able to take care of himself. But evidently it is about him and the Westerns that Laurence is in such a state of mind. I really do wonder why he should care so much.”
And the next morning the Cheviotts left Paris.