You
know it would."
"Cuthbert involved! How can you say such things when you know how much
we all think of him?"
"Of course I know you think a lot of him, and that he's engaged to marry
Beatrice, and that it will be a frightfully good match, and that he's
your ideal of what a son-in-law ought to be. All the same, it was
Cuthbert's idea to stow the things away in the cottage, and it was his
motor that brought them. He was only doing it to help his friend
Pegginson, you know--the Quaker man, who is always agitating for a
smaller Navy. I forget how he got involved in it. I warned you that
there were lots of quite respectable people mixed up in it, didn't I?
That's what I meant when I said it would be impossible for old Betsy to
leave the cottage; the things take up a good bit of room, and she
couldn't go carrying them about with her other goods and chattels without
attracting notice. Of course if she were to fall ill and die it would be
equally unfortunate. Her mother lived to be over ninety, she tells me,
so with due care and an absence of worry she ought to last for another
dozen years at least. By that time perhaps some other arrangements will
have been made for disposing of the wretched things."
"I shall speak to Cuthbert about it--after the wedding," said Mrs.
Bebberly Cumble.
"The wedding isn't till next year," said Vera, in recounting the story to
her best girl friend, "and meanwhile old Betsy is living rent free, with
soup twice a week and my aunt's doctor to see her whenever she has a
finger ache.
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