ooked up from the lawn mower's letter, which she had placed on the top
of Winn's; the medicine bottles sprang from the table and fell back
again sufficiently shaken for the next dose.

"Do you mean to tell me!" cried Sir Peter in a quieter voice, "that that
little piece of dandelion fluff--that baggage--that city fellow's half
baked, peeled onion of a minx is going to desert her husband? That's
what I call it--desertion! What does she want to go back to her people
for? She must go with him! She must go to Davos! She shall go to Davos!
if I have to take her there by the hair! I never heard of anything so
outrageous in my life! What becomes of domesticity? where's family life?
That's what I want to know! and is Winn such a milk and water noodle
that he's going to sit down under it and say 'Thank you!' Not that I
think he needs to go to Davos for a moment, mind you. Let him come here
and have a nice quiet time with me, that's what he wants."

"That's all very well, Father," said Charles. "But what you mean is you
don't want to fork out! If the chap's told to go to Davos, he's got to
go to Davos, and it's his own look-out whether he takes his wife with
him or not. Consumption isn't a joke, and I tell you plainly that if you
don't help him when he's got a chance, you needn't expect _me_ to come
to the funeral. No flowers and coffins and beloved sons on tombstones,
are going to make me move an inch. It'll be just the same to me as if
you'd shoved him under with your own hand, and that's all I've got to
say, and it's no use blowing the roof off about it!"

"You'd better go now, Charles," said Lady Staines quietly.

When Sir Peter had finished saying what he thought of Charles and what
he intended to do to the entail, Lady Staines gave him his medicine.

"Look here, Peter," she said, "this is a bad business about our boy."

Sir Peter met her eyes and nodded.

"Yes," he agreed, "a damned bad business!"

"We'd better get him off," she added after a moment's pause.

"It's all nonsense," grumbled Sir Peter, "and I told you from the first
you ought never to have let him marry that girl. Her father's the
poorest tenant I ever had, soft-headed, London vermin! He doesn't know
anything about manure--and he'll never learn. I shall cut down all his
trees as soon as I'm about again. As for the girl, keep her out of my
sight or I'll wring her neck. I ought to have done it long ago. How much
does he want?"

"Let's make it three hun