"
Tears obliterated the words and the head of the nail.
"So long as I can do something for your family," she was saying, as she
hammered at it, when a voice called melodiously in the passage:
"Mrs. Chailey! Mrs. Chailey!"
Chailey instantly tidied her dress, composed her face, and opened the
door.
"I'm in a fix," said Mrs. Ambrose, who was flushed and out of breath.
"You know what gentlemen are. The chairs too high--the tables too
low--there's six inches between the floor and the door. What I want's
a hammer, an old quilt, and have you such a thing as a kitchen table?
Anyhow, between us"--she now flung open the door of her husband's
sitting room, and revealed Ridley pacing up and down, his forehead all
wrinkled, and the collar of his coat turned up.
"It's as though they'd taken pains to torment me!" he cried, stopping
dead. "Did I come on this voyage in order to catch rheumatism and
pneumonia? Really one might have credited Vinrace with more sense.
My dear," Helen was on her knees under a table, "you are only making
yourself untidy, and we had much better recognise the fact that we are
condemned to six weeks of unspeakable misery. To come at all was the
height of folly, but now that we are here I suppose that I can face
it like a man. My diseases of course will be increased--I feel already
worse than I did yesterday, but we've only ourselves to thank, and the
children happily--"
"Move! Move! Move!" cried Helen, chasing him from corner to corner with
a chair as though he were an errant hen.
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