"Lunn or Dunn. Yes, I remember now; it's Lunn, because the girl said when she was a child she thought Sally Lunns had something to do with both. You may depend on it, I'm right. Well, Major Roper's his most intimate friend. They belong to the same club."
The ladies then lost sight of their topic, which lapsed into a rather heated discussion of whether the very old gentleman was a Colonel or a Major. As we don't want to hear them on this point, we may let them lapse too.
It may have been because of some home anxieties—notably about the Major, whose bronchitis had been bad—that Rosalind Fenwick continued happily unconscious of having incurred any blame or taken any responsibility on herself in connexion with the Ladbroke Grove row, as Sally called it. If she had known of it, very likely it would not have troubled her, for she was really too contented with her own condition and surroundings to be concerned about externals. Whatever troubles she had were connected with the possibility, which always seemed to grow fainter, of a revival of her husband's powers of memory. Sometimes whole weeks would pass without an alarm. Sometimes some little stirring of the mind would occur twice in the same day; still, the tendency seemed to be, on the whole, towards a more and more complete oblivion.
But the fact is that so long as she had the Major invalided at Krakatoa Villa (for he was taken ill there, and remained on her hands
many weeks before he could return to his lodgings) she had the haziest impressions of the outside world. Sally talked about "the row" while they were nursing the old boy, but really she heeded her very little. Then, when the invalid was so far reinstated that he was fit to be moved safely, Sally went away too, for a change.
The respite to old Colonel Lund was not to be for long. But the rest, alone with her husband, was not unwelcome to Rosalind.
"I can never have been one-tenth as happy, Rosey darling," said he to her one day, "as I have been in the last six months. I should recollect all about it if I had."
"You're a satisfactory chap to deal with, Gerry—I must say that for you. You always beam, come what may. Even when you fly out—which you do, you know—it's more like a big dog than a wasp. You were always...." Now, Rosalind was going to say "always like that"; it was a mistake she was constantly in danger of. But she stopped in time, and changed her speech to "You're not without your faults, you know! You never can come to an anchor, and be quiet. You sit on the arms of chairs, and your hands are too big and strong. No; you needn't stop. Go on!" We like leaving the words to elucidate the concurrent action. "And you don't smell much of tobacco."
Fenwick, however, had noticed the kink in the thread, and must needs wind it back to get a clear line. "I was always what?" said he. His wife saw a way out.
"Always good when your daughter was here to manage you." It wasn't so satisfactory as it might have been, but answered in dealing with a mind so unsuspicious. Sally's having spent Christmas and stayed on a little at a friend's in the country lent plausibility to a past tense which might else have jarred.