Part 28 (1/2)

”Where would you propose that I should take her?” Mr Ffolliot asked, fixing his monocle and staring steadily at his mother-in-law.

”To tell you the truth, Hilary, I don't propose that _you_ should take her anywhere. What I propose is that her father and I should take her to Cannes with us a week to-day.”

”To Cannes,” Mr Ffolliot gasped, ”in a week. I don't believe she could stand the journey.”

”Oh yes, she could. Her father will see that she does it as comfortably as possible, and I shall take Adele, who can look after both of us. We'll stay a night in Paris, and at Avignon if Margie shows signs of being very tired. You must understand that Margie will go as our guest.”

Mr Ffolliot dropped his monocle and leant back in his chair. ”It is most kind of you and the General,” he said politely, ”but I doubt very much if she can be persuaded to go.”

”Oh she's going,” Mrs Grantly said easily, while Mary, with scarlet cheeks, looked at her plate, knowing well that the subject had never been so much as touched upon to her mother. ”You see, Hilary, she has had a good deal of Redmarley, and the children and you, during the last twenty years, and it will do her all the good in the world to get away from you all for a bit. Don't you agree with me, Mary?”

Mary lifted her downcast eyes and looked straight at her father. ”The doctor says it's mother's only chance of getting really strong,” she said boldly, ”to get right away from all of us.”

”You, my dear Hilary,” Mrs Grantly continued in the honeyed tones her family had long ago learnt to recognise as the precursor of verbal castigation for somebody, ”would not be the agreeable and well-informed person you are, did you not go away by yourself for a fairly long time during every year. I don't think you have missed once since Grantly was born. How often has Margie been away by herself, even for a couple of nights?”

”Margie has never expressed the slightest wish to go away,” Mr Ffolliot said reproachfully. ”I have often deplored her extreme devotion to her children.”

”Somebody had to be devoted to her children,” said Mrs Grantly.

Mr Ffolliot ignored this thrust, saying haughtily, ”Since I understand that this has all been settled without consulting me, I cannot see that any good purpose can be served in further discussion of the arrangement now,” and he rose preparatory to departure.

”Wait, Hilary,” Mrs Grantly rose too. ”I don't think you quite understand that the smallest objection on your part to Margie would at once render the whole project hopeless. What you've got to do is to smile broadly upon the scheme----”

Here Mary gasped, the ”broad smile” of the Squire upon anything or anybody being beyond her powers of imagination.

”Otherwise,” Mrs Grantly paused to frown at Mary, who softly vanished from the room, ”you may have Margie on your hands as an invalid for several months, and I don't think you'd like that.”

”But who,” Mr Ffolliot demanded, ”will look after things while she's away?”

”Why you and Mary, to be sure. My dear Hilary,” Mrs Grantly said sweetly, ”a change is good for all of us, and it will be wholesome for you to take the reins into your own hands for a bit. I confess I've often wondered how you could so meekly surrender the whole management of this big place to Margie. It's time you a.s.serted yourself a little.”

Mr Ffolliot stared gloomily at Mrs Grantly, who smiled at him in the friendliest fas.h.i.+on. ”You see,” she went on, ”you are, if I may say so, a little un.o.bservant, or you would perhaps have personally investigated what made Ger, an otherwise quite normally intelligent child, so very stupid over his poor little lessons.”

”I've always left everything of that sort to his mother.”

”I know you have--but do you think it was quite fair? And for a long time Margie has been looking thin and f.a.gged. Her father was most concerned about it at Christmas--but I never heard you remark upon it.”

”She never complains,” Mr Ffolliot said feebly.

”Complains,” Mrs Grantly repeated scornfully. ”We're not a complaining family. But I should have thought _you_ with your strong love of the beautiful would at least have remarked how she has gone off in looks.”

”She hasn't,” said Mr Ffolliot with some heat.

”She looks her age, every day of it,” Mrs Grantly persisted. ”When we bring her back she'll look like Mary's sister!”

”How long do you propose to be away?”

”Oh, three weeks or a month; at the most a fortnight less than you have had every year for nineteen years.”