“And, Betty—”
“Yes.”
“Don’t say much about the eyes. It doesn’t do for a professional man to get a reputation for feebleness in his physical equipment.”
“I shall not say anything.”
“Thanks. You see, I’m rather busy.”
She turned, looked round the room vaguely, her face cold and empty of any marked expression. Then she went slowly to the door, opened it, and passed out into the hall. The house seemed peculiarly dim and lonely as she climbed the stairs to her own room.
CHAPTER XXXI
“Good-bye, Mrs. Murchison; good-bye, old man; wish you could have stayed with us. Shake hands, sonny, now you’re off.”
A barrow-load of belated luggage went clattering by as the shrill pipe of the guard’s whistle sounded the departure. On the opposite platform a couple of porters were banging empty milk-cans on to a truck. Yet from the noise and turmoil of it all, John Tugler’s red face shone out with a redeeming exuberance of good-will.
“Good-bye.”