"Oh, you!—you're all right. You can transfer your apprenticeship, and—er—well, I'm not the sort of man to be careless with trust funds, you can be sure. I kept that aspect in mind. There's some of it left, George—trust me!—quite a decent little sum."
"But you and aunt?"
"It isn't quite the way we meant to leave Wimblehurst, George; but we shall have to go. Sale; all the things shoved about and ticketed—lot a hundred and one. Ugh! . . . It's been a larky little house in some ways. The first we had. Furnishing—a spree in its way. . . . Very happy. . . ." His face winced at some memory. "Let's go on, George," he said shortly, near choking, I could see.
I turned my back on him, and did not look round again for a little while.
"That's how it is, you see, George," I heard him after a time.
When we were back in the high-road again he came alongside, and for a time we walked in silence.
"Don't say anything home yet," he said presently. "Fortunes of War. I got to pick the proper time with Susan—else shell get depressed. Not that she isn't a first-rate brick whatever comes along."
"All right," I said, "I'll be careful" and it seemed to me for the time altogether too selfish to bother him with any further inquiries about his responsibility as my trustee. He gave a little sigh of relief at my note of assent, and was presently talking quite cheerfully of his plans. . . . But he had, I remember, one lapse into moodiness that came and went suddenly. "Those others!" he said, as though the thought had stung him for the first time.
"What others?" I asked.
