'Then, checking up your statements,' he said, 'I find that I am expected to go to tea with a woman who, in addition, apparently, to being a blend of Lucretia Borgia and a Prussian sergeant-major, is a physical wreck and practically potty. Why? That is what I ask. Why? As a child, I objected strongly to Nurse Wilks: and now, grown to riper years, the thought of meeting her again gives me the heeby-jeebies. Why should I be victimized? Why me particularly?'
'It isn't you particularly. We've all been to see her at intervals, and so have the Oliphants.'
'The Oliphants!'
The name seemed to affect Frederick oddly. He winced, as if his brother had been a dentist instead of a general practitioner and had just drawn one of his back teeth.
'She was their nurse after she left us. You can't have forgotten the Oliphants. I remember you at the age of twelve climbing that old elm at the bottom of the paddock to get Jane Oliphant a rook's egg.'
Frederick laughed bitterly.
'I must have been a perfect ass. Fancy risking my life for a girl like that! Not,' he went on, 'that life's worth much. An absolute wash-out, that's what life is. However, it will soon be over. And then the silence and peace of the grave. That,' said Frederick, 'is the thought that sustains me.'
'A pretty kid, Jane. Someone told me she had grown up quite a beauty.'
'Without a heart.'
'What do you know about it?'