“You’ll let Myra come too?” said Olivia, deliciously anxious to keep to the playful side of an inevitable road.
“Of course. We’ll find her a husband. The cabin-boy. Pour mousse un chérubin.”
“And when we get to the Fortunate Isles, what should we do there?”
“We shall fill our souls with sunlight, so that we could use it when we came back to our work in this dark and threatening modern world.”
The girl’s heart leapt at the reply.
“I’ll go up to John o’ Groats with you whenever you like,” she said.
But the taxi, at that moment drawing up before the detached toy villa, whose “Everdene” painted on the green garden gate proclaimed the home of the Blenkirons, inhibited Triona’s reply.
They found within an unbeautiful assemblage of humans inextricably mingled with crumbling cake and sloppy cups of tea and cigarette smoke. Agnes, shining with heat and hospitality, gave them effusive welcome and, extricating her brother from a distant welter, introduced him to the newcomers. He was a flabby-faced young man with a back-thatch of short rufous hair surmounting a bald forehead. By his ears grew little patches of side whiskers. He wore an old unbuttoned Norfolk jacket and a red tie in a soft collar without an under pin. He greeted them with an enveloping clammy hand.
“So good of you to come, Miss Gale. So glad to meet you, Mr. Triona. We have heard so much about you. You will find us here all very earnest in our endeavour to find a Solution—for never has human problem been so intricate that a Solution has not been discovered.”
“What’s the problem?” asked Olivia.