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they and the little brown spaniel that was lost with them, and walk in at that window

just as they used to do. That is why the window is kept open every evening till it is quite
dusk. Poor dear aunt, she has often told me how they went out, her husband with his

white waterproof coat over his arm and Ronnie, her youngest brother, singing ‘Bertie,
why do you bound?’ as he always did to tease her, because she said it got on her nerves.

Do you know, sometimes on still, quiet evenings like this, I almost get a creepy feeling
that they will all walk in through that window...’’

She broke off with a little shudder. It was a relief to Framton when the aunt bustled into
the room with a whirl of apologies for being late in making her appearance.

‘‘I hope Vera has been amusing you?’’ she said.
‘‘She has been very interesting,’’ said Framton.

‘‘I hope you don’t mind the open window,’’ said Mrs Sappleton briskly; ‘‘my husband
and brothers will be home directly from shooting, and they always come in this way.

They’ve been out for snipe in the marshes today, so they’ll make a fine mess over my
poor carpets. So like you menfolk, isn’t it?’’

She rattled on cheerfully about the shooting and the scarcity of birds, and the prospects
for duck in the winter. To Framton it was all purely horrible. He made a desperate but

only partially successful effort to turn the talk on to a less ghastly topic, he was conscious
that his hostess was giving him only a fragment of her attention, and her eyes were

constantly straying past him to the open window and the lawn beyond. It was certainly
an unfortunate coincidence that he should have paid his visit on this tragic anniversary.

‘‘The doctors agree in ordering me complete rest, an absence of mental excitement, and
avoidance of anything in the nature of violent physical exercise,’’ announced Framton,

who laboured under the tolerably widespread delusion that total strangers and chance
acquaintances are hungry for the least detail of one’s ailments and infirmities, their cause

and cure. ‘‘On the matter of diet they are not so much in agreement,’’ he continued.
‘‘No?’’ said Mrs Sappleton, in a voice which only replaced a yawn at the last moment.

Then she suddenly brightened into alert attention but not to what Framton was saying.
‘‘Here they are at last!’’ she cried. ‘‘Just in time for tea, and don’t they look as if they

were muddy up to the eyes!’’
Framton shivered slightly and turned towards the niece with a look intended to convey

sympathetic comprehension’’. The child was staring out through the open window with
a dazed horror in her eyes. In a chill shock of nameless fear Framton swung round in his

seat and looked in the same direction.

40 English-8