"Well!" she said, with the accompanying sigh which denotes complete content. "So he did it! Now, I should never have thought it! The last person of the whole lot! Clever--very clever! Richard, you'll get all the books that that man has written!"
Viner lighted his pipe, thrust his hands in the pockets of his trousers and leaned back against the mantelpiece.
"My dear aunt!" he said half-teasingly, half-seriously. "You're worse than a drug-taker. Whatever makes a highly-respectable, shrewd old lady like you cherish such an insensate fancy for this sort of stuff?"
"Stuff?" demanded Miss Penkridge, who had resumed her knitting. "Pooh! It's not stuff--it's life! Real life--in the form of fiction!"
Viner shook his head, pityingly. He never read fiction for his own amusement; his tastes in reading lay elsewhere, in solid directions. Moreover, in those directions he was a good deal of a student, and he knew more of his own library than of the world outside it. So he shook his head again.
"Life!" he said. "You don't mean to say that you think those things"--he pointed a half-scornful finger to a pile of novels which had come in from Mudie's that day--"really represent life?"
"Oh--I don't know," replied Viner vaguely. "Fancy, I suppose, and imagination, and all that sort of thing--invention, you know, and so on. But--life! Do you really think such things happen in real life, as those we've been reading about?"
"I don't think anything about it," retorted Miss Penkridge sturdily. "I'm sure of it. I never had a novel yet, nor heard one read to me, that was half as strong as it might have been!"
"Queer thing, one never hears or sees of these things, then!" exclaimed Viner. "I never have!--and I've been on this planet thirty years."
"That sort of thing hasn't come your way, Richard," remarked Miss Penkridge sententiously. "And you don't read the popular Sunday newspapers. I do! They're full of crime of all sorts. So's the world. And as to mysteries--well, I've known of two or three in my time that were much more extraordinary than any I've ever read of in novels. I should think so!"
Viner dropped into his easy-chair and stretched his legs.
"Well," answered Miss Penkridge, regarding her knitting with appraising eyes, "there was a case that excited great interest when your poor mother and I were mere girls. It was in our town--young Quainton, the banker. He was about your age, married to a very pretty girl, and they'd a fine baby. He was immensely rich, a strong healthy young fellow, fond of life, popular, without a care in the world, so far as any one knew. One morning, after breakfasting with his wife, he walked away from his house, on the outskirts of the town--only a very small town, mind you--to go to the bank, as usual. He never reached the bank--in fact, he was never seen again, never heard of again. He'd only half a mile to walk, along a fairly frequented road, but--complete, absolute, final disappearance! And--never cleared up!"