“That seems strange.”
“Strange things do occur in this world.”
“Because Crowther was laid up in his last illness for four months inside this house, and never went outside until the undertaker’s man carried him. And a pretty tidy nuisance he was, too, then, and, in fact, all the time I was married to him. Is that a constable-coming along, or a postman?”
Hards, having ascertained that the approaching man did not represent the law, remained, searching his mind busily. The postman stopped, gave Mrs. Crowther a letter with a foreign postmark, and remarked that the evening was fine.
“His ship will be home here within a fortnight,” she cried excitedly, glancing at the first words of the communication. “Two weeks from to-day.”
“Who?”
“Nobody you know,” said Mrs. Crowther. “And then we shall be married, and I shan’t have to keep the men at the works off by pretending to be so fond of my first. It’s taken a bit of doing. Let me think, now. You want to see Ethel, I expect, don’t you?”
“I don’t want to see no one,” he declared with an emphatic gesture, “no one on this side of the river ever again, so long as I jolly well live!”
XIV—THE REST CURE
“Knew you’d like it, dear,” said Mr. Gleeson confidently. “I declared the moment I saw the place, ‘Now this,’ I said to myself, ‘this will suit the dear wife down to the ground.’ Just look at that bit over there. (Wait a moment, driver.) Isn’t that simply—”