Page:Chronicles of Clovis - Saki.djvu/290



N the morning-room of his sister-in-law's house, Groby Lington fidgetted away the passing minutes with the demure restlessness of advanced middle age. About a quarter of an hour would have to elapse before it would be time to say his goodbyes and make his way across the village green to the station, with a selected escort of nephews and nieces. He was a good-natured, kindly-dispositioned man, and in theory he was delighted to pay periodical visits to the wife and children of his dead brother William; in practice, he infinitely preferred the comfort and seclusion of his own house and garden, and the companionship of his books and his parrot to these rather meaningless and tiresome incursions into a family circle with which he had little in common. It was not so much the spur of his own conscience that drove him to make the occasional short journey by rail to visit his relatives, as an obedient concession