Sam was aware of this and had frequently regretted it. He had always been fond of his cousin and in that half-amused and rather patronising way in which men of thews and sinews are fond of the weaker brethren who run more to pallor and intellect; and he had always felt that if Eustace had not had to retire to Windles to spend his life with a woman whom from his earliest years he had always considered the Empress of the Wash-outs much might have been made of him. Both at school and at Oxford, Eustace had been—if not a sport—at least a decidedly cheery old bean. Sam remembered Eustace at school breaking gas globes with a slipper in a positively rollicking manner. He remembered him at Oxford playing up to him manfully at the piano on the occasion when he had done that imitation of Frank Tinney which had been such a hit at the Trinity smoker. Yes, Eustace had had the makings of a pretty sound egg, and it was too bad that he had allowed his mother to coop him up down in the country miles away from anywhere.
“Eustace is returning to England on Saturday,” said Mrs. Hignett. She spoke a little wistfully. She had not been parted from her son since he had come down from Oxford; and she would have liked to keep him with her till the end of her lecturing tour. That, however, was out of the question. It was imperative that, while she was away, he should be at Windles. Nothing would have induced her to leave the place at the mercy of servants who might trample over the flower-beds, scratch the polished floors, and forget to cover up the canary at night. “He sails on the Atlantic.”
“That’s splendid,” said Sam. “I’m sailing on the Atlantic myself. I’ll go down to the office and see if we can’t have a stateroom together. But where is he going to live when he gets to England?”
“Where is he going to live? Why, at Windles, of course. Where else?”
“But I thought you were letting Windles for the summer?”
Mrs. Hignett stared.
“Letting Windles!” She spoke as one might address a lunatic. “What put that extraordinary idea into your head?”
“I thought father said something about your letting the place to some American.”
“Nothing of the kind!”
It seemed to Sam that his aunt spoke somewhat vehemently, even snappishly, in correcting what was a perfectly natural mistake. He could not know that the subject of letting Windles for the summer was one which had long since begun to infuriate Mrs. Hignett. People had certainly asked her to let Windles. In fact people had pestered her. There was a rich fat man, an American named Bennett, whom she had met just before sailing at her brother’s house in London. Invited down to Windles for the day, Mr. Bennett had fallen in love with the place and had begged her to name her own price. Not content with this, he had pursued her with his pleadings by means of the wireless telegraph while she was on the ocean, and had not given up the struggle even when she reached New York. He had egged on a friend of his, a Mr. Mortimer, to continue the persecution in that city. And, this very morning, among the letters on Mrs. Hignett’s table, the buff envelope of a cable from Mr. Bennett had peeped out, nearly spoiling her breakfast. No wonder, then, that Sam’s allusion to the affair had caused the authoress of “The Spreading Light” momentarily to lose her customary calm.
“Nothing will induce me ever to let Windles,” she said with finality, and rose significantly. Sam, perceiving that the audience was at an end—and glad of it—also got up.
“Well, I think I’ll be going down and seeing about that stateroom,” he said.
“Certainly. I am a little busy just now, preparing notes for my next lecture.”
“Of course, yes. Mustn’t interrupt you. I suppose you’re having a great time, gassing away—I mean—well, good-bye!”
“Goodbye!”
Mrs. Hignett, frowning, for the interview had ruffled her and disturbed that equable frame of mind which is so vital to the preparation of lectures on Theosophy, sat down at the writing-table and began to go through the notes which she had made overnight. She had hardly succeeded in concentrating herself when the door opened to admit the daughter of Erin once more.