A clock chimed the hour, and the wife looked up from her letter. She turned a face that was still pretty for all her fifty odd years, in the direction of the man at the window.
"Ten o'clock, Charles," she reminded him. Then her enquiring look melted into a gentle smile. "The office has less attraction with the snow falling."
"It has less attraction to-day, anyway," the lawyer responded without turning. A short laugh punctuated his prompt reply.
"You mean the Nancy McDonald business?"
Sarah Nisson laid her mail aside.
"Yes." The lawyer sighed and turned from his contemplation of the snow. He moved across to the stove. "I'm a bit of a coward, Sally," he went on, holding out his hands to the warmth. "The lives of other people are nearly as interesting as they are exasperating. They seem just as foolishly ordered as we believe our own to be well and truly ordered. I don't know who it was said 'all men are fools,' or liars, or something, but I guess he was right. Yes, we're all fools. I really don't know how we manage to get through a day, let alone a lifetime, without absolute disaster. We spend most of our time abusing Providence for the result of our own shortcomings, when really we ought to be mighty polite and thankful to the blind good fortune that lets us dodge the results of our follies."
"All of which I suppose has to do with the way Leslie Martin, or Leslie Standing, as he calls himself now, is acting."
"Well, most of it."
The man's eyes had become seriously reflective again.
Sarah Nisson nodded her pretty head. She leant her ample proportions towards the stove and emulated her husband's attitude, warming her plump hands. Her brown eyes were twinkling, and her broad, unlined brow was calmly serene. Her iron-grey hair was as carefully dressed as though she were still in the twenties, moreover it was utterly untouched by any of the shams so beloved of the modern woman of advancing years.