“I never really cared for him. He had horrid swimmy eyes . . .”
“I understand. So you eloped with your Mike. Tell me about him. Who is he? What does he do?”
“Well, at present he’s master at a school. But he doesn’t like it. He wants to get back to the country again. When I met him, he was agent on a place in the country belonging to some people named Smith. Mike had been at school and Cambridge with the son. They were very rich then and had a big estate. It was the next place to the Edgelows. I had gone to stay with Mary Edgelow—I don’t know if you remember her at school? I met Mike first at a dance, and then I met him out riding, and then—well, after that we used to meet every day. And we fell in love right from the start and we went and got married. Oh, Eve, I wish you could have seen our darling little house. It was all over ivy and roses, and we had horses and dogs and . . .”
Phyllis’ narrative broke off with a gulp. Eve looked at her sympathetically. All her life she herself had been joyously impecunious, but it had never seemed to matter. She was strong and adventurous, and revelled in the perpetual excitement of trying to make both ends meet. But Phyllis was one of those sweet porcelain girls whom the roughnesses of life bruise instead of stimulating. She needed comfort and pleasant surroundings. Eve looked morosely at the china dog, which leered back at her with an insufferable good-fellowship.
“We had hardly got married,” resumed Phyllis, blinking, “when poor Mr. Smith died and the whole place was broken up. He must have been speculating or something, I suppose, because he hardly left any money, and the estate had to be sold. And the people who bought it—they were coal people from Wolverhampton—had a nephew for whom they wanted the agent job, so Mike had to go. So here we are.”
Eve put the question which she had been waiting to ask ever since she had entered the house.
“But what about your stepfather? Surely, when we were at school, you had a rich stepfather in the background. Has he lost his money, too?”
“No.”
“Well, why doesn’t he help you, then?”
“He would, I know, if he was left to himself. But it’s Aunt Constance.”