"Well, you see he used to be a newspaper man, and the Chronicle was the paper he worked for."

Ann flushed.

"I know," she said shortly.

Something in her tone arrested Mr. Pett's attention.

"Yes, yes, of course," he said hastily. "I was forgetting."

There was an awkward silence. Mr. Pett coughed. The matter of young Mr. Crocker's erstwhile connection with the New York Chronicle was one which they had tacitly decided to refrain from mentioning.

"I didn't know he was your nephew, uncle Peter."

"Nephew by marriage," corrected Mr. Pett a little hurriedly. "Nesta's sister Eugenia married his father."

"I suppose that makes me a sort of cousin."

"A distant cousin."

"It can't be too distant for me."

There was a sound of hurried footsteps outside the door. Mrs. Pett entered, holding a paper in her hand. She waved it before Mr. Pett's sympathetic face.

"I know, my dear," he said backing. "Ann and I were just talking about it."

The little photograph had not done Mrs. Pett justice. Seen life-size, she was both handsomer and more formidable than she appeared in reproduction. She was a large woman, with a fine figure and bold and compelling eyes, and her personality crashed disturbingly into the quiet atmosphere of the room. She was the type of woman whom small, diffident men seem to marry instinctively, as unable to help themselves as cockleshell boats sucked into a maelstrom.

"What are you going to do about it?" she demanded, sinking heavily into the chair which her husband had vacated.

This was an aspect of the matter which had not occurred to Mr. Pett. He had not contemplated the possibility of actually doing anything. Nature had made him out of office hours essentially a passive organism, and it was his tendency, when he found himself in a sea of troubles, to float plaintively, not to take arms against 

 Prev. P 11/237 next