"Where is she now actually?"
"It's called the Browne Convalescent Home, at Chalk Cliff, in Kent. Sidrophel—I should say Pordage—said he saw no object in sending her to a mild lowering place at this time of year. What she wanted was the sea-air, and he is very much in love with Chalk Cliff. Well!—one smells the seaweed there."
"It's the iodine, I suppose." Challis's mind travelled to his own children, who were, he hoped, soaking in the iodine, wallowing in the sand, wading in the shallows, and not keeping their things out of the water. Should he ever see Mumps and Chobbles again? Possibly. Suppose he were to meet them years hence, lengthened and completed, at Girton, perhaps—even engaged; who can tell?—would they know him again? His thoughts rushed swiftly, more suo, to the construction of all sorts and conditions of social horrors, beginning with an improbable evening party with Chobbles in the foreground, and her married sister, and a fiendish necessity for explaining to a dazzling lady who was charmed with both of them, that they were his children by his former marriage—the very identical Mumps and Chobbles he had so often told her about! But that dream was soon sent packing, although the dazzling lady said, with a pleasant, graceful contempt for all correlatives of Grundy: "You must come and see me, you two dear girls! Do let's be German, and take no notice of things. Never mind the orkwidities, as my husband calls them." A worse phantasm followed. Two girls in mourning beside a grave, and "Marianne, daughter of James and Sarah Craik," on the headstone. So vivid was the impression that the words were on his lips: "Mumps and Chobbles, don't you know me?" He shook it off, denouncing its intrinsic absurdity, even while he admitted he had no justification for doing so. Marianne would die, and so would he, and neither would be beside the other when the hour came.
"Am I going too quick for you?" said the Rector. He had broken into his tremendous stride, as he was always apt to do when not checked. Challis admitted his limitations, and suggested that they might go easily up this hill. As this hill was a short-cut across a curve of the road, and the path over it was zig-zagged, and landslipped, and fern-grown, besides seeming to consist almost entirely of rabbit-holes, it was not a hill to go up easily, in any literal sense. But Challis had only intended to suggest moderation. He gave his whole soul to avoiding burrows, and reached solid ground alive. As he approached the top, alongside of his companion, he was aware of a huge dog, blue-black against the sky, on the ridge in front of them. Saladin appeared to be waiting for them, and to have time on his hands. Whistled to, he condescended to trot towards them, the sooner to meet. Interrogated as to his reasons for being there by himself, he kept silence, but smelt his questioners.
Perhaps he wasn't by himself. Surmise inclined to the supposition that the carriage was in the neighbourhood; probably Lady Arkroyd, driving back from Thanes, said the Rector. But attentive listening established carriage-wheels on the road from Furnival—the opposite direction.
"It's Miss Arkroyd coming from the station. She was coming by the two-forty from Euston." So spoke Challis.
The Rector looked full at him. "How did you know?" said he. He seemed a good deal surprised.
"Because she told me," said Challis. He in his turn seemed surprised at the surprise of the other, and interrogation remained on the face of both. Saladin seemed able to wait.
After a moment the Rector said suddenly: "Because she's been away at her sister's—Brayle Court, you know—the Felixthorpes'."
"Yes; why not? She told me three weeks ago she was coming to-day. She drove to Bletchley from Brayle."