"What? Oh, the car. No, I shan't need it tonight, thanks."
He set off on his normal evening walk down the High Street, trying hard not to feel snubbed. He had not been anxious to go to The Franchise in the first instance, and had made his reluctance pretty plain; she was quite naturally avoiding a repetition of the circumstances. That he had identified himself with their interests was a mere business affair, to be resolved in an office, impersonally. They would not again involve him further than that.
Ah, well, he thought, flinging himself down in his favourite chair by the wood fire in the sitting-room and opening the evening paper (printed that morning in London), when they came to the office on Friday he could do something to put the affair on a more personal basis. To wipe out the memory of that first unhappy refusal.
The quiet of the old house soothed him. Christina had been closeted in her room for two days, in prayer and meditation, and Aunt Lin was in the kitchen preparing dinner. There was a gay letter from Lettice, his only sister, who had driven a truck for several years of a bloody war, fallen in love with a tall silent Canadian, and was now raising five blond brats in Saskatchewan. "Come out soon, Robin dear," she finished, "before the brats grow up and before the moss grows right round you. You know how bad Aunt Lin is for you!" He could hear her saying it. She and Aunt Lin had never seen eye to eye.
He was smiling, relaxed and reminiscent, when both his quiet and his peace were shattered by the irruption of Nevil.
"Why didn't you tell me she was like that!" Nevil demanded.
"Who?"
"The Sharpe woman! Why didn't you tell me?"
"I didn't expect you would meet her," Robert said. "All you had to do was drop the letter through the door."
"There was nothing in the door to drop it through, so I rang, and they had just come back from wherever they were. Anyhow, she answered it."