"Then I go there, David," she announced, "early to-morrow, and stay at a farmhouse until the war is over." She asked me rather anxiously whether I thought the enemy's airships were likely to get so far as Berkshire, and, meeting a glance from her husband, I gave the opinion that the county referred to, might be looked upon as safe. In all likelihood, the Germans had never heard of it. "My view exactly," she said. "You will get rid of the house, David, and go into your old bachelor rooms."
"But the furniture, my dear?"
"He has no head for management," remarked the lady to me, apologetically. "You and I must settle this. Name a figure for all the old stuff, and the remainder can go to one of the auction rooms."
Her husband, in seeing me once again, to the front door, mentioned, with a chuckle, that Zeppelin raids had their drawbacks, but that they did appear to be capable of solving a domestic problem.
The circumstance that my journey had not been wasted, in a business sense, helped me to make my way home cheerfully. There was some excitement amongst the people travelling, a great deal of interest, and very little of anything resembling nervousness. One or two who had been at the moment in underground trains regretted their ill-luck in missing the sights and the sounds, declaring that this was but a sample of the misfortune which persistently dogged their footsteps through life, and the others tried to console them up by prophesying hopefully that the occurrence would undoubtedly be repeated. No one could have complained that night of the reticence of the Londoner. Everyone talked to everybody, and one woman with a basket of groundsel possessed special information that made her seem richer than any of the rest of us; she exacted a respect that had, it is certain, not hitherto been paid to her. All the values were, for a time, disturbed. At Greenwich station I met Mr. Hillier. He was waiting for Miss Katherine and her brother, who had gone to a theatre, with orders that had been presented to Master Edward; some of the invented scraps of news had come by the down trains, and Mr. Hillier was anxious. He walked the three sides of the courtyard outside the station, and I remembered the announcement thrown to me by Richards.
"Well now," he declared, "that is really something to be grateful for. Muriel is alive, at any rate. But what I can't understand is, why she is doing it? I don't see the reason. What induced her to run off?"
"I think, sir, that she was fed up with everything. I imagine that she wanted to start afresh."
"But she might have taken you, Weston, or me, or one of us into her confidence."