“I shall settle Mambles on you, with an income on Elise,” Mr. Brett had explained, with his eyes half shut, “and then if you and Elise want me to stay on as she says, I’ll decline here. I may have years to decline in, I may only have months, or, according to one doctor, I may not decline at all, but go out splashless. But I want you and Elise to live in your own home here at Mambles, not mine—it don’t do to start living in other people’s homes. Dying can be done anywhere, it’s not as important as it looks.” After this renunciation on the part of Mr. Brett it seemed ungracious to present him with a speedy request for another. But Elise’s tears overcame John’s scruples. He found Mr. Brett in the library by the open door which led on to the south terrace. He was watching the birds fluttering about the edge of a stone bath. “They’re having the deuce of a time,” he explained to John, without turning his eyes, “step quiet so as not to disturb them. A whole raft get round the rim together and shove—just like humans.” “Mr. Brett,” said John resolutely, “I’ve been talking to Elise.” “Sure,” agreed his father-in-law reassuringly. “As long as she don’t fire you, let her talk: the great point with a woman is to have everything out on the carpet. Whatever she thinks you don’t want her to say, she’s got to say anyway; but if she puts it off, she gets cold-blooded about it, the way Jael felt to Sisera when she planted that nail, and palmed off the butter. If Jael had been encouraged to speak right out and tell Sisera what she thought of him when he first arrived, she wouldn’t have driven in that nail, she’d have put it away for the first Hoodoo that made her keep things back.” “Elise and I haven’t quarrelled,” explained John, ignoring this unpleasant analogy, “but I have found her upset. It seems she wants Hermione to stay here before our marriage, and if you’ll forgive me saying so, Sir, I don’t see why she shouldn’t have her.” “I’ll forgive you right along, John,” said Mr. Brett with a chuckle. “I’m prepared to forgive anybody anything once it’s happened, but I’m not prepared to let things happen that I don’t want to have to forgive. And I’m damned if I’ll have Hermione inside this house before your marriage.” “I don’t quite see why—” said John a little resentfully. Mr. Brett pulled his lean slanting limbs together and sat up straight; he even stopped watching the birds. He looked at John attentively. “Now, see here my son,” he observed, “marriage is tough. It takes a lot of what you might call hand to hand breaking, with the law against you, to spoil a marriage. Engagements is just the opposite, they break as easily as a grasshopper’s hind leg—I guess that’s about the thinnest thing in nature. You just keep calm and wait. You’ll have Mambles and Hermione too, soon enough.”