"You have had no wireless from your uncle or from the firm since you left?" he asked, a little abruptly.
"You asked me that before," she reminded him. "Why on earth should I? We said good-by early in the morning after the night you dined with us. Uncle would never dream of coming to see me off. He hates steamers and he hates what he calls 'looking westwards.' How he will survive life in England I am sure I can't imagine, except that he does sometimes still admit that English country life is wonderful."
"I think I would rather live in New York," she confessed, "but I can't fancy Uncle there. I think that would be expecting a little too much of him. He still has friends and a few relatives in England."
"Pretty sporting of him to break away at all," Gregory observed, "after all these years."
"I think it is marvellous," she agreed. "I am sure if I hadn't come, he'd rather go on living in that strange, smelly little house of his and read Chinese manuscripts and interpret Chinese hieroglyphics round old ornaments, and talk Chinese literature with some of the quaintest-looking people you ever saw up at the University, than do anything else in the world."
"All the same," Gregory remarked, "they say that a man should always return to the country of his birth to end his days. Besides, China is no place for an Englishman after a certain number of years. He'd become nothing but an old fossil without the society of his own kind."
"What a nice, consoling person you are," she declared. "Sometimes I've had it on my conscience a little that I'm taking him away from the things he likes best in life."
"I shouldn't worry about that," he told her. "He'll be better at home amongst some of his old cronies, and for you--well, of course, China would be utterly impossible."
"I am very happy to be going to England," she assured him. "I am looking forward to the country life immensely."
"Riding and tennis are the extent of my accomplishments," she replied. "I like those. And then, after a year or so, I shall hope to travel on the Continent. My aunt still has a great many friends in Paris."
"One meets so many American women and girls in France and Italy," he observed, "and so few men. Why are they such stay at homes?"