CHAPTER XXVII
Miss Carmagee sat crying at the breakfast-table over a letter that she held in her fat, white hand. It was a letter from Catherine, and told of the last resting-place of Gwen, a narrow bed of clay amid white headstones on the Wilson hills. She had been reading the letter aloud to her brother, whose face was a study in the irritable suppression of his feelings.
“Damn that bird!”
The canary in its cage by the window was filling the room with shivers of shrill sound. Porteus pushed his chair back, jerked an antimacassar from the sofa, and flung it over the bird’s cage.
“Go on, dear, go on. I am expecting Dixon to see me in ten minutes.”
Miss Carmagee wiped her spectacles, and blundered on brokenly through the letter. There were eight pages, closely written, and whether it was the indistinctness of Catherine’s writing, or the dimness of Miss Carmagee’s eyes, the old lady’s progress was sluggish in the extreme. She had forgotten to add milk to her untasted cup of tea, and the rashers of bacon on her plate were congealing into unappetizing grease.
Porteus sat fidgeting at the far end of the table. The vitality of his interest betrayed itself in a frowning and jerky spirit of impatience.
“Well, what are they going to do now, eh? Stay on and lose the boy? Murchison ought to have more sense.”
Miss Carmagee’s eyes had assumed an expression of moist surprise behind her spectacles. She appeared to be digesting some unexpected piece of news in silence, and with the amiable forgetfulness of a lethargic mind.
Porteus had handed her his empty cup. Some seconds elapsed before his sister noticed the intrusion of the china.