s, I promise."

CHAPTER XII

Ida Fenton, Jimmy's younger sister, was a tall, fair woman with a
beautiful profile and hazel-blue eyes. Women who did not like her called
her a stick, and even her friends admitted that she was severe.
Stiffness was the dominant note in her character. Most men, including
even her husband, wondered that she had ever married. In pre-Reformation
times she would certainly have been a nun, and probably a saint, being
passionless, and therefore able to avoid all carnal sins without effort.
However, she belonged to an age which regarded marriage as the one
vocation for women, at least for those of position, and she had accepted
Joseph Fenton, if not with enthusiasm, at least with satisfaction. He
appeared to fulfil all the necessary conditions, and she had never found
reason to regret her choice. If Fenton himself sometimes appeared hurt
at the fact that she did not display more outward affection towards him
or the children, she seldom worried over the matter, being fully
conscious of her own rectitude of conduct and feeling.

Jimmy felt chilled the moment he entered the Fenton house. Ida's own
personality seemed to be reflected in everything, in the furniture, in
the pictures, and above all in the unnaturally tidy children to whom he
was presently introduced. He could still feel the one cold kiss which
Ida had given him, and, when he was shown up to his room, he
unconsciously gave the spot an extra dab with the sponge.

The weather was bitter, yet there was no fire in the big spare room, Ida
holding that fires in bedrooms were unhealthy and extravagant,
consequently, being still thin blooded as a result of ten years in
tropical climates, he was shivering when he got downstairs again.

"Can I have a little whisky, Joe?" he said to his brother-in-law, whom
he found in the smoking-room. "I've got a bit of a chill on me, and it
takes very little to bring out my malaria."

Ida, who had just entered, frowned slightly. "Ammoniated quinine would
do you more good, Jimmy. Joseph himself never drinks between meals. It's
such a bad example if the children happen to come in."

Jimmy stifled a retort to the effect that the obvious course was to keep
the children out; but he refused the proffered quinine and helped
himself to some of the whisky which his brother-in-law had already
produced.

Ida sighed and went out, whereupon Fenton lost no time in making use of
the second glass which was on th