Lulu flushed and glanced at him pitifully.
"He has," she said. "It's my mother and me. But we do quite a good deal of the work."
"I'll bet you do," said Ninian, and did not perceive that anything had been violated. "What's your name?" he bethought.
She was in an immense and obscure excitement. Her manner was serene, her hands as they went on with the peeling did not tremble; her replies were given with sufficient quiet. But she told him her name as one tells something of another and more remote creature. She felt as one may feel in catastrophe—no sharp understanding but merely the sense that the thing cannot possibly be happening.
"You folks expect me?" he went on.
"Oh, yes," she cried, almost with vehemence. "Why, we've looked for you every day."
"'See," he said, "how long have they been married?"
Lulu flushed as she answered: "Fifteen years."
"And a year before that the first one died—and two years they were married," he computed. "I never met that one. Then it's close to twenty years since Bert and I have seen each other."
"How awful," Lulu said, and flushed again.