"Have you had a busy day, dear?" Aunt Lin asked, opening her table napkin and arranging it across her plump lap.
This was a sentence that made sense but had no meaning. It was as much an overture to dinner as the spreading of her napkin, and the exploratory movement of her right foot as she located the footstool which compensated for her short legs. She expected no answer; or rather, being unaware that she had asked the question, she did not listen to his answer.
Robert looked up the table at her with a more conscious benevolence than usual. After his uncharted step-picking at The Franchise, the serenity of Aunt Lin's presence was very comforting, and he looked with a new awareness at the solid little figure with the short neck and the round pink face and the iron-grey hair that frizzed out from its large hairpins. Linda Bennet led a life of recipes, film stars, god-children, and church bazaars, and found it perfect. Well-being and contentment enveloped her like a cloak. She read the Women's Page of the daily paper (How To Make A Boutonniere From Old Kid Gloves) and nothing else as far as Robert was aware. Occasionally when she tidied away the paper that Robert had left lying about, she would pause to read the headlines and comment on them. ("MAN ENDS EIGHTY-TWO DAY FAST"-Silly creature! "OIL DISCOVERY IN BAHAMAS"-Did I tell you that paraffin is up a penny, dear?) But she gave the impression of never really believing that the world the papers reported did in fact exist. The world for Aunt Lin began with Robert Blair and ended within a ten-mile radius of him.
"What kept you so late tonight, dear?" she asked, having finished her soup.
From long experience Robert recognised this as being in a different category from: "Have you had a busy day, dear?"
"I had to go out to The Franchise-that house on the Larborough road. They wanted some legal advice."
"Those odd people? I didn't know you knew them."
"I didn't. They just wanted my advice."
"I hope they pay you for it, dear. They have no money at all, you know. The father was in some kind of importing business-monkey-nuts or something-and drank himself to death. Left them without a penny, poor things. Old Mrs. Sharpe ran a boarding-house in London to make ends meet, and the daughter was maid-of-all-work. They were just going to be turned into the street with their furniture, when the old man at The Franchise died. So providential!"
"Aunt Lin! Where do you get those stories?"