"Yes, I should love to see you make tea. Bachelors always make such good tea. What pretty cups! My word, we are dainty! I suppose it was Esther bought them for you?"
Henry detected the little trap and smiled. No, it hadn't been Esther.
"No? Someone else then? eh! I think I can guess her name. It was mean of you not to tell me about her, Henry. I hear she's called Angel, and that she looks like one. I wish I could have seen her before I went away."
"Going away, Myrtilla? why, where? I've heard nothing of it. Tell me about it."
The atmosphere perceptibly darkened with the thought of Williamson.
"Well!" she said, in the little airy melodious way she had when she was telling something particularly unhappy about herself--a sort of harpsichord bravado--"Well, you know, he's taken to fancying himself seriously ill lately, and the doctors have aided and abetted him; and so we're going to Davos Platz, or some such health-wilderness--and well, that's all!"
"And you I suppose are to nurse the--to nurse him?" said Henry, savagely.
"Hush, lad! It's no use, not a bit! You won't help me that way," she said, laying her hand kindly on his, and her eyes growing bright with suppressed tears.
"It's a shame, nevertheless, Myrtilla, a cruel shame!"
"You'd like to say it was a something-else shame, wouldn't you, dear boy? Well, you can, if you like: but then you must say no more. And if you really want to help me, you shall send me a long letter now and again, with some of your new poems enclosed; and tell me what new books are worth sending for? Will you do that?"
"Of course, I will. That's precious little to do anyhow."
"It's a good deal, really. But be sure you do it."
"And, of course, you'll write to me sometimes. I don't think you know yet what your letters are to me. I never work so well as when I've had a letter from you."
"Really, dear lad, I don't fancy you know how happy that makes me to hear."
"Yes, you take just the sort of interest in my work I want, and that no one else takes."
"Angel, bless her, loves my work; and is a brave little critic of it; but then it isn't disloyal to her to say that she doesn't know as much as you. Besides, she doesn't approach it in quite the same way. She cares for it, first, because it is mine, and only secondly for its own sake. Now you care for it just for what it is--"