“But, Aunt Anna, I don’t understand the change on your part. You who rejected all idea of a compromise——”
Aunt Anna laughed. “I have no objection to one kind of compromise. Bring us back that little dove-eyed thing as Mrs Geoff. I’d rather have had the other; but you could never have managed her. Settle my money upon Milly in her marriage settlements; and don’t mind about our absence from the ceremony. Go and see Niagara, and all that, and bring us back your wife—that’s the kind of compromise I want; that’s all I stipulate for, Geoff.”
“If I can, Aunt Anna.”
“Pooh—can! With a week under the same roof, and a fortnight in the same ship. Rubbish! If you can’t, you are a poorer creature than I thought. Go, go, off with you, Geoff—before your mother comes to herself.”
“Where is Geoff going? Oh, Anna, help me, help me! don’t let him go. Geoff!” cried Mrs Underwood.
Upon which Miss Anna confronted her sister with her most imposing looks. “Mary! don’t be a fool. The boy is doing precisely what he ought to do. I never had such a good opinion of him before; let him alone. He is fifty times better able to take care of himself than you are to take care of him. Here’s the telegram; let us see what it says.”
“It says, I suppose, just what he read to us, Anna,” said the other, frightened into some degree of self-denial, and with a little curiosity re-awakening in her blurred overflowing eyes.
“A thing never says anything to you when it’s read aloud. Here it is. ‘Stephen Salisbury, Quebec, to Grace Yorke, Montague Hotel, London.’ (Then it was sent on from the hotel.) ‘Terrible news received; mother prostrated; wire if wish me to come.’ Of course it must be the mother’s brother. The people must be well off, Mary. There cannot be any doubt about that. You see he says he will come if they want him; and even the message shows it. The man would never have sent such a long message if he had not been well off.”
“I always knew that,” said Mrs Underwood feebly, “from what Grace and Milly said. Why shouldn’t their uncle (if it is their uncle) come for them? I don’t know why they should be in such a hurry to get away?”
“It is a great deal better that Geoff should go with them,” Miss Anna said. “Pluck up a heart; or if you can’t do that, get a little common-sense, Mary; common-sense will do just as well. Why should anything happen to a Cunard steamer because your boy happens to be in it more than another? Do you think God has a special spite against you?”