Joan forced herself to smile. "I was thinking we'd be late for the train."
"Oh, no, you weren't; but never mind. You amuse me, Joan. May I call you Joan? Well, in any case, you amuse me. Oh! But you are too funny and young and gauche, a regular boor, and your grey-green coloured eyes go quite black when you're angry. I should never be able to resist making you angry just for the pleasure of seeing your eyes change colour; do you think you could manage to get really angry with me some day?"
Joan felt hot with embarrassment. What was the matter with this woman; didn't she know that she was in the room with a perfectly awful tragedy, didn't she realize that here was something that would probably ruin three people's lives? She wondered if this was Harriet's way of keeping the situation in hand, of trying to carry the thing off lightly. Perhaps, after all, she was only making an effort to fall in with Milly's mood; that must be it, of course.
Harriet's decided voice went on persistently. "Come up and see me sometimes; don't stop away because Milly isn't here, though I expect she'll be back soon. But in the meantime come up and see me; I shall like to see you quite often, if you'll come."
"Thank you," said Joan, "but I'm never in London."
Harriet smiled complacently. "We'll see," she murmured.
Joan turned to Milly. "Come on, Milly, we ought to go; it's getting late."
4
In the train Milly talked incessantly; she was flushed now, and the hand that she laid on Joan's from time to time felt unnaturally hot and dry. She assured Joan eagerly that the doctor was a fool and an alarmist; that he had sent a girl home only last year for what he called "pernicious anæmia," whereas she had been back at College in less than four months as well as ever. Milly said that if they supposed she was going to waste much time, they were mistaken; a few weeks perhaps, just to get over that infernal pneumonia, but no longer at Leaside—no, thank you! If she stayed at Leaside she was sure she would die, but not of consumption, of boredom! Her lungs were all right, she never spat blood, and you always spat blood if your lungs were going. It was quite bad enough as it was though; jolly hard lines having a set-back at this critical time in her training. Never mind, she would have to work all the harder later on to make up for it.
She talked and coughed and coughed and talked all the way from London to Seabourne. She was like a thing wound up, a mechanical toy. Joan's heart sank.