"Oh, Meg, I do so hate uncertainty. I'd rather know the worst. I always have the foreboding that he will suddenly turn up at Wren's End and threaten to take the children away ... and get money out of me that way ... and there's none to spare...." "Jan, you've got into a thoroughly nervous, pessimistic state about Hugo. Why in the world should he _want_ the children? They'd be terribly in his way, and wherever he put them he'd have to pay _something_. You know very well his people wouldn't keep them for nothing, even if he were fool enough (for the sake of blackmailing you) to threaten to place them there. His sisters wouldn't--not for nothing. What did Fay say about his sisters? I remember one came to the wedding, but she has left no impression on my mind. He has two, hasn't he?" "Yes, but only one came, the Blackpool one. But Fay met both of them, for she spent a week-end with each, with Hugo, after she was married." "Well, and what did she say?" Jan laughed and sighed: "She said--you remember how Fay could say the severest things in the softest, gentlest voice--that 'for social purposes they were impossible, but they were doubtless excellent and worthy of all esteem and that they were exactly suited to the _milieu_ in which they lived.'" "And where do they live?" "One lives at Blackpool--she's married to ... I forget exactly what he is--but it's something to do with letting houses. They're quite well off and all her towels had crochet lace at the ends. Fay was much impressed by this, as it scratched her nose. They also gave you 'doylies' at afternoon tea and no servant ever came into the room without knocking." "Any children?" "Yes, three." "And the other sister?" "She lives at Poulton-le-Fylde, and her husband had to do with a newspaper syndicate. Quite amusing he was, Fay says, but very shaky as to the letter 'H.'" "Would they like the children?" "They might, for they've none of their own, but they certainly wouldn't take them unless they were paid for, as they were not well off. They were rather down on the Blackpool sister, Fay said, for extravagance and general swank." "What about the grandparents?" "In Guernsey? They're quite nice old people, I believe, but curiously--of course I'm quoting Fay--comatose and uninterested in things, 'behindhand with the world,' she said. They thought Hugo very wonderful, and seemed rather afraid of him. What he has told them lately I don't know. He wrote very seldom, they said; but _I've_ written to them, saying I've got the children and where we shall be. If they express a wish to see the children I'll ask them to Wren's End. If, as would be quite reasonable, they say it's too far to come--they're old people, you know--I suppose one of us would need to take them over to Guernsey for a visit. I do so want to do the right thing all round, and then they can't say I've kept the children away from their father's relations."