“I told you that there must be some cause.”
“Because he exceeded even his usual ample measure of incivility to me, do you mean?”
There is very little bitterness in the voice or words, only a sort of regret mixed with some not quite ordinary quality of patience.
“I felt sure that he had had something to ruffle him.”
“He has always something to ruffle him. He has always me; but to-day, dear old chap, he had something more.”
“Poor Bill’s things came back this morning—his watch and his cigar-case, and mother’s photograph—and with them, I think, but of course father did not show that to me, a letter from the fellow whom Bill picked up on his own horse, and brought out from the Boer fire when he himself was mortally wounded.”
There is an unresenting pain running through the whole of this narrative, but Lavinia does not notice it.
“Does the letter give any more details—say whether he suffered much?” she asks, in white eagerness. “Oh, but I forgot,” half impatiently, “you did not see it!”
“He will show it to you,” replies the young man, as if stating a perfectly natural and accountable fact.