On her return an hour or so later she asked, “Is there anything in the paper?”

Before answering I examined this question.  What did it mean?  It did not mean, Are the pages this morning absolutely blank, for a change?  It meant, Is there a good murder?  Is any very important person dead?  In reply I handed the paper to her.

Instead of reading it she began a long account of her morning’s walk.  She told me where she had been; whom she had seen; whom she had thought she had seen and then found that it was some one else; what somebody had said.  Not a syllable mattered, I now realised; but yesterday I should have joined in the talk, asked questions, encouraged her in her foolishness.

Just before lunch my brother and a guest came into the room and began to talk about golf.  My brother said that he had been round in 98.  This was his best since September, when he went round in 97.  He described his difficulties at the tenth hole.

It all seemed very idiotic to me, for the game was over and done with.  Why rake it up?

The guest said that he had lost two balls, one of which was expensive.  His driving had been good, but in the short game he had been weak.  He could never quite make up his mind whether he putted best with a gun-metal putter or a wooden one.

My brother asked me if I remembered that long drive of his two years ago?

I nodded.

The nurse came in and told them to go.  She then asked me if I was hungry.

“Very,” I said.

She brought me some beef-tea and calf’s-foot-jelly, remarking that they were easily taken and “would not hurt my throat.”

That was why they were chosen, of course.

In the afternoon I had a visit from my Aunt Lavinia, who sat down with the remark that she would tell me all the news.

“You remember Esther?” she began.

Esther is my cousin and we were brought up together.  How could I have forgotten her?

What she told me about Esther was of no consequence.  Then she told me how she had nearly lost her luggage at Brighton—­she quite thought she had lost it, in fact—­but, as it happened, it turned up.  “And if I had lost it,” she said, “it would have been dreadful, for I had a number of dear Stella’s beautiful sketches in one of my trunks.  Quite irreplaceable.  However, it is all right.”

Then why tell me?

And so she rattled on.

“You don’t say anything,” she said at last.

It was true.  I had said nothing.  I told her what the doctor instructed.

“Quite right,” she remarked.  “I wish other people even in good health could have the same prescription.”

Just before dinner my brother came in again.  “You’ve had Aunt Lavinia here,” he said.

I had.

“Getting quite grey, I thought,” he said.

I had noticed it too.

He was smoking, and while he was with me he emptied his pipe and filled it again.  He thought he had knocked the burning ash in the grate, but it had fallen in the turn-up of his right trouser-leg.