“My aunt will be down in a moment,” said the girl. “Until then I shall entertain you.”
Framton Nuttel felt that this would not be an easy task. His sister, who had sent him to the country to rest, had given him letters to all sorts of acquaintances about whom he himself knew next to nothing.
“Do you know my aunt?” asked the girl.
“Hardly,” admitted Framton. “My sister stayed here four years ago and gave me a letter.”
“Then you know nothing about her,” said the girl, and leaned back, satisfied.
The French window of the room stood open to the garden, and the girl glanced at it.
“Three years ago my uncle went out through that window with his two brothers, to shoot,” she said. “And they never came back.”
Framton froze. The girl’s voice was calm, as if she were talking about the weather.
“The marsh took them,” she went on. “It was dreadful. My poor aunt still waits for them.”
“Waits?”
“Yes. Every evening she leaves that window open, and at dinner she lays their places too. Then she talks about them as if they were only late.”
Framton looked around the room, and he noticed that the window was indeed open, and that the wind was moving the curtain.
“Here comes my aunt,” said the girl.
Mrs. Sappleton came in with a straight back and greeted the visitor politely. She had knitting in her hands.
“Forgive me for keeping you waiting,” she said. “I hope Vera has been entertaining you.”
Then she glanced towards the window and smiled.
“My husband and his brothers are coming home from shooting today,” she said. “They have been out for three days, and tonight we shall have wild duck.”
Framton felt something tighten in his throat.
“Please, we will not talk about your illness,” the aunt went on, “because the doctor said there must be no excitement at all.”
Framton said nothing. The room was quiet, and only the curtain moved at the window.
“My husband always walks the mud onto the carpet,” said the aunt, and laughed. “And the dogs come into the kitchen.”
Framton looked at the girl. The girl looked back at him seriously, and did not say a word.
Then the aunt turned suddenly towards the window.
“Here they are!” she said.
Framton looked towards the window, and in the garden he saw three figures: men walking through the grass, muddy, with guns on their shoulders, and a dog running ahead of them.
Framton caught up his hat and stick and ran out of the room; at the garden gate he almost collided with a cyclist.
“What happened?” asked Mrs. Sappleton, and stepped to the window.
“I think he was afraid of the dogs,” said Vera calmly. “He was once chased by a pack of dogs, in a cemetery, in India, and since then he cannot bear them.”
The aunt believed it. The men arrived, and everyone sat down to dinner.
And Vera was already spinning her next story, because invention on the spot was her speciality.
