"I wish you'd marry someone else, that is if you want to marry at all; it may take me such a long time to think it over." He looked at her stubbornly. "I'll wait," he said. "I'm the waiting kind when I want a thing badly enough." CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX 1 MILLY'S illness was discussed at every tea-table in Seabourne, and proved a grateful topic in the stiff little club as well. If the Ogdens did nothing else, they certainly provided food for comment. Joan's Short Hair, the Colonel's Death, Mrs. Ogden's Popish Tendencies and now Milly's Consumption were hailed in turn with discreet enthusiasm. Major Boyle, the doleful politician, killed Milly off at least a dozen times that spring. "Family's riddled with it!" he remarked lugubriously. "I happen to know for a fact that three of the mother's brothers died of it." General Brooke laughed asthmatically. "That's queer," he chuckled, "for she only had _one_!" Major Boyle sighed as though this in itself were a tragedy. "Oh, really, only one? Then it must have been a brother and two cousins--yes, that was it, two cousins--riddled with it!" The little bank manager fidgeted in his chair, his mouth opened and shut impatiently; if only they would let him get a word in edgeways. At last he could contain himself no longer. "Miss Joan told me----" he begun. But Sir Robert Loo interrupted with intentional insolence. "You were saying, Boyle, that two of the cousins died of consumption; which were they, I wonder? I was at Christ Church with Peter Routledge, a cousin of the mother's, awfully nice chap he was, but a bit of a wildster." They began tossing the ball of conversation backwards and forwards and around between themselves, keeping it the while well above the head of the bank manager. Eton, Christ Church, old days in India, the Buffs, the Guards, crack shots, shooting parties, phenomenal exploits with the rod and line, lovely women. They nodded their heads, chewing the ends of their cigars and murmured "By Gad!" and "My dear fellow!" the while they exaggerated and romanced about the past.