"Fancy I got a little chill in the damp ... oh no!—I changed everything. Besides...."
"Besides-what?"
"Well—it was such an awful business, you know! Why, when we were driving down to the station, how was I to know I shouldn't find you burned to a cinder? Just fancy!—Polly Anne!"
"You wouldn't have cared," says Marianne, softening. This was an improvement, and none the worse for the serious note in Challis's voice as he referred again to his relief when he knew the alarm had been for nothing. Nevertheless, in a sense, he was glad it was true that he had gone through strain enough to account for fifty nervous ague-fits. But he felt a dreadful hypocrite for all that! Just fancy!—availing himself of the incident to cover his embarrassment in answering a plain question about his young lady friend. But his duplicity was really for Marianne's sake as well as his own. Come now!
"I tell you what, Tite: you must have a regular good strong hot toddy to-night, with plenty of lemon. I'll make it for you." This was good—almost Coram Street again! Why spoil it? "I can't think what could possess you to go catching cold at the station. It didn't do any good." But she improved it: "You must have it after you're in bed, and you must have my duvet." Challis made no immediate protest against this policy, but the prospect of a June night under a duvet can never be tempting, even when one anticipates the sleep of a clear conscience. He was, however, really grateful, kissing a rather improved countenance his wife advanced on application: this phrase is taken from his mind, which had taken it, more suo, from the moneylender's column in the Times.
"It isn't anything; I've no objection to the toddy, though. Now, tell me some more about your mother ... about the dentist ... anything ... oh, by-the-bye! one of my letters was from Bob. It's upstairs.... I'll go and fetch it."
"Never mind it now! Or I can send Harmood. You didn't answer my question."
"Let me see—what was the question? No, don't ring! Harmood won't know where to find it. Besides, I don't want her fishing about among my papers." And the obstinate man went, and came back with the letter. If he hoped that the previous question was going to lapse, he was mistaken.
"The question was about your friend Miss Arkroyd." She took Bob's letter, opened it, and made a pretence of looking at it. But she left her restatement, with all the force it had gathered by delay, for his consideration while she did so.
He stood behind her, looking over her shoulder at Bob's letter. The exact thing that crossed his mind as he did so was that he had now a new box of wax vestas in his pocket. But, then, he had had to quash the thought that suggested it. "That's a portrait of the new second master putting on his trousers," said he. "What about my friend Miss Arkroyd, Polly Anne dear?... No, that's not his real name. Pitt's his real name.... Rev. Iairus Pitt.... Oh, well!—boys will be boys, you know...."