“My brother is only joking, of course. The idea is too funny. We’ve just had all the expense and trouble of moving in, and it’s foolish to dream of anything but staying here. Don’t mind what he says.”
Thursby pushed out his lips. “Oh, I don’t know that it’s so foolish. If circumstances, I mean business ones, are satisfactory, nothing is foolish. I learned long ago that when my wife gets a premonition that we’re going to do something, we most always do. For instance,” he blurted, “if she were to say she had a feeling we were going to move back to Beech Lodge I’d bet on it. It’s safe money.”
Derrick laughed. “Aren’t you reckoning a little without your host?”
“I know it sounds like that. I say, I wonder what Mrs. Millicent thought of all this.”
“She probably thinks it’s a sort of release for that woman and everyone else,” put in his wife hastily; “and that’s the only way to look at it. A sort of a general cleanup, I call it. Fancy that gardener coming back, too. He must have been the only person in the world who wasn’t frightened of his wife.”
“Where do you think you’ll be this summer?” interposed Edith.
Mrs. Thursby folded her plump hands. “I shouldn’t be surprised if that depended on you,” she said calmly.
“Oh!”
The other woman nodded and went on with a kind of placid deliberation. “My dear, it’s no earthly use beating about the bush any longer, and I’m going to come straight out with it. Very soon after we let this place to you, we took another, didn’t like it, and then I knew we’d been too impulsive about letting Beech Lodge, and I wanted to come back to it, Perkins or no Perkins. I never gave the dreadful woman a thought, because she didn’t seem to matter nearly so much when one had not to look at her. I told my husband about it, but he only laughed, said I had changed my mind too late in the day and the idea was absurd. Later we went over to France for a while.”
“Were you there long?” asked Derrick curiously.
“No, only a few weeks. I couldn’t settle down somehow. Then we read about what happened here, and I knew what was the matter with me. It was just as though that woman had telegraphed me that she was out of the way now, and I might come back.” She paused, with an odd expression on her round face, and glanced approvingly round the room. “So now, if it is possible to arrange it, I want to come. If you’re agreeable, then it’s up to your brother and my husband. So far as I’m concerned, it’s not a matter of money, and James knows that.”
She leaned back with a nod which announced that on this subject she had now emptied her mind, and there was no chance of misunderstanding it on the part of her husband. He was the means to the end. Thursby’s hands were deep in his pockets, and he stared out over the lawn, his brows puckered, as though he were adding up figures, which indeed he was. Edith’s eyes caught those of her brother, and she signaled a message that left no possibility of doubt in his mind. At that he turned to Thursby:
“Shall we have a stroll? I’ve put in quite a lot of new roses, and there’ll be something of a show here next summer.”
The little man nodded jerkily, and they went out. Mrs. Thursby sat up straight and heaved a contented sigh.
“Then, that’ll be all right, if it suits you. Isn’t it all queer?”
“I think everyone feels that.”
“Well, of course I don’t know the ins and outs of it, only what’s in the papers, and I suppose there’s a lot more, but I felt that neither you nor I had much to do with that woman staying on here. However, I’ve my eye on a jewel of a girl now who will go anywhere. Do you suppose if those men agree there’ll have to be another inventory?”
“I’m afraid so, though we haven’t had time yet to do much damage. That French window was broken, but it’s been repaired.” She paused, while something drew her eyes to the hearth. “And there’s that jade image,” she added uncertainly; “but that’s Mrs. Millicent’s.”
“What jade image? I never saw one here. Where is it?”
“What’s left of it is in the fireplace.”
The stout little woman stooped and picked out an emerald splinter.
“My dear, what perfectly lovely stuff! Were you going to throw it away?”
“It’s Mrs. Millicent’s, and she asked to have the image destroyed.”
“And jade, too! How queer some people are! It’s very fashionable now, and there’s enough here to make some gorgeous earrings.”
The thought of the remodeled god with his cold fingers at her throat gave Edith an involuntary chill.
“I really don’t want it, and am sure Mrs. Millicent doesn’t, so please take it if you wish.”
Mrs. Thursby dropped the splinter into her bag, got on her knees, and poked about among the ashes.
“I’m afraid the rest is all dust. What a pity! I’ve been trying to mesmerize James for years into buying me something of jade, but he simply won’t. Now I’m going to give him a surprise, so please don’t say a thing about it. Here they come now, and I think it’s all arranged. James is pretty quick in business matters.”
The Thursbys’ car rolled away a few minutes later, and Derrick darted upstairs. He found Jean and her mother in Edith’s room and, linking arms, marched them cheerily back to the study, where Edith waited with a patience in which there was no virtue whatever. Then he put his arm round Jean.
“Thursby,” he said contentedly, “was like clay in the hands of the potter. I began by reminding him that not only had we the lease till next winter, but also the right of extension for another three years on the same terms. He pretended to have forgotten that, but of
