“Father is out—lecturing, poor dear man! Aunt Charlotte is away for the day too; so I’m all alone.”
Carey sank into one of the deep chairs with a sigh of pleasure.
“How is it your room is always so charming?” he said, with an appreciative glance right and left. “It’s like an oasis in the desert.”
Helen laughed softly. “Are things as bad as that? I should hardly have described London as a desert,—a rather thickly populated one, isn’t it?”
“Oh! I don’t know,” he replied with a slight, rather weary movement. “It’s a howling wilderness to me. I hate it. I’ve got the wander-fever in my blood, I think. I want to be off again, back to ‘them spicy garlic smells, and the sunshine, and the palm trees.’ I hear the East a-calling too imperiously sometimes, Miss Mansfield.”
“I expect you are over-working,” Helen said, looking at him with a little half maternal air of concern.
There were tired lines about his eyes, though they were bright and alert as ever.
“Well! I’ve got rather a stiff job at present,” he admitted, “but I’m going to take a holiday in a week or two. Jim’s out of town, I hear?”
“Yes. He’s in Yorkshire. He has an important case on.”
“Won’t you play me something?” Carey asked, after a moment. “I’ve been thirsting for music all day.”