You're worn out
with catering and housekeeping. Mabel is your oldest friend, besides,
and you've hardly seen her since he died--"
"She's been abroad for a year, Bill, and only just came back," my sister
interposed. "She came back rather unexpectedly, though I never thought
she would go there to live--" She stopped abruptly. Clearly, she was
only speaking half her mind. "Probably," she went on, "Mabel wants to
pick up old links again."
"Naturally," I put in, "yourself chief among them." The veiled reference
to the house I let pass.
It involved discussing the dead man for one thing.
"I feel I ought to go anyhow," she resumed, "and of course it would be
jollier if you came too. You'd get in such a muddle here by yourself,
and eat wrong things, and forget to air the rooms, and--oh, everything!"
She looked up laughing. "Only," she added, "there's the British
Museum--?"
"But there's a big library there," I answered, "and all the books of
reference I could possibly want. It was of you I was thinking. You could
take up your painting again; you always sell half of what you paint. It
would be a splendid rest too, and Sussex is a jolly country to walk in.
By all means, Fanny, I advise--"
Our eyes met, as I stammered in my attempts to avoid expressing the
thought that hid in both our minds.
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