He knew he really ought to send her, too, and the
child, of course.
And again the expense.
He remembered the Christmas holidays were not very far away; what
would become of the house with Pip and Bunty and the two youngest
girls running wild, and no one in authority? He sighed heavily, and
knocked the ash from his fourth cigar upon the carpet.
Then the postman came along the drive and past the window. He poked
up with a broad smile, and touched his helmet in a pleased kind of
way. If almost seemed as if he knew that in one of the letters he
held the solution of the problem that was making the Captain's brow
all criss-crossed with frowning lines.
A fifth cigar was being extracted from the case, a wrinkle was
deepening just over the left eyebrow, a twinge of something very like
gout was calling forth a word or two of "foreign language," when
Esther came in with a smile on her lips and an open letter in her
hands.
"From Mother," she said. "Yarrahappini's a wilderness, it seems, and
she wants me to go up, and take the General with me, for a few weeks."
"Ah!" he said.
It would certainly solve one of the difficulties. The place was very
far away certainly, but then it was Esther's old home, and she had
not seen it since her marriage.
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