She saw him smile.

“Lovely for everyone! Especially for Arnold!”

Susan hated people who beat about the bush. She plunged.

“Look here, Edward, what is all this? Why shouldn’t your Uncle Arnold be pleased? Because if there has been a lurid family quarrel, I had much better know, or I shall be sure to put my foot in it.”

“Both feet, I should think! It’s not so much a Row as an Awkward Situation, and as you’ll be right in the middle of the Random family you had better be put wise.” He swung the two suit-cases and stuck out his chin. “Well, here you are- we’ll start with a little potted family history. In the last generation there were three Randoms-my Uncle James, my father Jonathan, and my Uncle Arnold. James lost his wife and child and never married again. Jonathan married twice when he had tried most other things and failed at them, after which he died, leaving a son, me, a widow, Emmeline, and a considerable number of debts which Uncle James thought it his duty to pay. He had a very strong sense of duty. He put Emmeline in the south lodge and brought me up regardless.”

“Yes?” Susan’s voice made a question of it.

He laughed.

“It wasn’t ‘Yes,’ my dear, it was a thundering ‘No.’ We had an epic row, and I cleared out.”

Susan remembered the row. It was about Verona, because Edward was ragingly in love with her, and James Random had taken the line that if he wanted to marry her he could go right ahead and do it, only he would have to foot the bill himself, because his allowance would automatically come to a full stop on his wedding day. A more dramatic version preferred by some credited James Random with the remark that he would rather see Edward in his coffin, but bearing in mind Mr. Random’s dignified personality and temperate manner of speech, Susan, even at seventeen, had not really found herself able to believe in it. With these things in her mind, she thought it best just to go on looking interested. It was always safer to say nothing than to chance what you said being wrong, only usually she didn’t think about this until it was too late.