Part 13 (2/2)

”You are right to be angry with me,” Robina replied meekly; ”there is no excuse for me. The whole thing is the result of my own folly.”

Her pathetic humility should have appealed to him. He can be sympathetic, when he isn't hungry. Just then he happened to be hungry.

”I left you making a pie,” he said. ”It looked to me a fair-sized pie.

There was a duck on the table, with a cauliflower and potatoes; Veronica was up to her elbows in peas. It made me hungry merely pa.s.sing through the kitchen. I wouldn't have anything to eat in the town for fear of spoiling my appet.i.te. Where is it all? You don't mean to say that you and Veronica have eaten the whole blessed lot!”

There is one thing-she admits it herself-that exhausts Veronica's patience: it is unjust suspicion.

”Do I look as if I'd eaten anything for hours and hours?” Veronica demanded. ”You can feel my waistband if you don't believe me.”

”You said just now you had had your lunch,” d.i.c.k argued.

”I know I did,” Veronica admitted. ”One minute you are told that it is wicked to tell lies; the next-”

”Veronica!” Robina interrupted threateningly.

”It's easy for you,” retorted Veronica. ”You are not a growing child.

You don't feel it.”

”The least you can do,” said Robina, ”is to keep silence.”

”What's the good,” said Veronica-not without reason. ”You'll tell them when I've gone to bed, and can't put in a word for myself. Everything is always my fault. I wish sometimes that I was dead.”

”That I were dead,” I corrected her. ”The verb 'to wish,' implying uncertainty, should always be followed by the conditional mood.”

”You ought,” said Robina, ”to be thankful to Providence that you're not dead.”

”People are sorry when you're dead,” said Veronica.

”I suppose there's some bread-and-cheese in the house,” suggested d.i.c.k.

”The baker, for some reason or another, has not called this morning,”

Robina answered sweetly. ”Neither unfortunately has the grocer.

Everything there is to eat in the house you see upon the table.”

”Accidents will happen,” I said. ”The philosopher-as our friend St.

Leonard would tell us-only smiles.”

”I could smile,” said d.i.c.k, ”if it were his lunch.”

”Cultivate,” I said, ”a sense of humour. From a humorous point of view this lunch is rather good.”

”Did you have anything to eat at the St. Leonards'?” he asked.

”Just a gla.s.s or so of beer and a sandwich or two,” I admitted. ”They brought it out to us while we were talking in the yard. To tell the truth, I was feeling rather peckish.”

d.i.c.k made no answer, but continued to chew bacon-rind. Nothing I could say seemed to cheer him. I thought I would try religion.

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