Mr. Brumley did not think very much of either of these two facts; if he had they would have spoilt the portrait in his mind; and when he did think of them it was chiefly to think how remarkably⁴ little they were necessary to that picture's completeness.

 

He spent some little time however trying to recall exactly what it was she had said about her children. He couldn't now succeed in reproducing her words, if indeed it had been by anything so explicit⁵ as words that she had conveyed to him that she didn't feel her children were altogether hers. "Incidental results of the collapse⁶ of her girlhood," tried Mr. Brumley, "when she married Harman."

 

Expensive nurses, governesses—the best that money without prestige or training could buy. And then probably a mother-in-law.

 

And as for Harman——?

 

There Mr. Brumley's mind desisted for sheer lack of material. Given this lady and that board and his general impression of Harman's refreshment⁷ and confectionery activity—the data were insufficient⁸. A commonplace man no doubt, a tradesman, energetic perhaps and certainly a little brassy, successful by the chances of that economic revolution which everywhere replaces the isolated⁹ shop by the syndicated enterprise,

分享到：