"Should you have sent it?"
"You know I should."
"And now you want to take me home?"
"That's why I'm here."
"Good old patriarch! The two lost lambs. Young Finch and I. . . . But what about Piers? He'd not stand for that. God, I should like to see his face if it were suggested!"
"I did see it. I told him I might fetch you if you were fit to travel."
Eden laughed, suddenly and maliciously. "Poor Piers! What did he say? That he'd poison all his pigs and then take a dose himself?"
"No," Renny returned, sternly. "He remarked that you were a waster and always would be. He said that if you were coming home to—to"
"To die. . . . Go on."
"That he'd take Pheasant away till it was over."
Again Eden was moved to mirth, but this time there was an hysterical note in it.
"It's a good thing you're amused," Renny observed calmly. "I should say that the joke is on you." He thought: "I wish I knew what is in the bottom of his mind. I wish I knew what he's been up to the past year."
But Eden's laughter brought on a fit of coughing. Renny watched him, his hard, thin frame tense with misery. "Can I do anything?" he entreated.
Eden raised his head, which he had buried in the pillow. His hair was plastered in damp locks on his forehead, his face flushed crimson.
"Look here, Renny."
"Yes."
"My mother died of lung trouble, didn't she?"
"The doctor called it that, but I think she simply pined away after Wake's birth. Father's death was hard on her."
"That's the way I'll go!"
"You've not been having a posthumous baby."
"Might that bring it on, do you think?"
"If a woman were inclined that way."
