Starvycrow—Starvycrow.
Peter walked quickly, almost running, from the reproach of Starvycrow.
§ 20
At about seven o’clock that evening a message came up from Conster, and as Peter was still out, it was brought to Vera. It was marked “immediate,” so she opened it.
“Who brought this, Weller?”
“The gardener’s boy, Ma’am.”
“Tell him Mr. Alard is out at present, but I’ll send him over as soon as he comes home——Sir John’s had another stroke,” she told her mother.
“Oh, my dear! How dreadful—I wish you hadn’t opened the letter. Shocks are so bad for you.”
“It wasn’t a shock at all, thanks. I’ve been expecting it for weeks. Besides, one really can’t want the poor old man to live much longer. He was getting a perfect nuisance to himself and everybody, and if he’d lived on might have done some real damage to the estate. Now Peter may just be able to save it, in spite of the death-duties.”
“But, my dear, he isn’t dead yet!” cried Mrs. Asher, a little shocked. She belonged to a generation to which the death of anybody however old, ill, unloved or unlovely, could never be anything but a calamity.