'Why?
I didn't expect that two gossiping old parsons would have nothing else to talk about than me.'
'When the Bishop said he'd been to Borneo it's only natural that the Hey woods should ask him if he knew you and Harold.'
'All that's neither here nor there,' said Mr Skinner.
'I think you should certainly have told us the truth, and we could have decided what was the best thing to do.
As a solicitor I can tell you that in the long run it only makes things worse if you attempt to hide them.'
'Poor Harold,' said Mrs Skinner, and the tears began to trickle down her raddled cheeks.
'It seems dreadful.
He was always a good son-in-law to me.
Whatever induced him to do such a dreadful thing?'
'The climate.'
'I think you'd better give us all the facts, Millicent,' said her father.
'Kathleen will tell you.'
Kathleen hesitated.
What she had to say really was rather dreadful.
It seemed terrible that such things should happen to a family like theirs.
'The Bishop says he cut his throat.'
Mrs Skinner gasped and she went impulsively up to her bereaved daughter.
She wanted to fold her in her arms.
'My poor child,' she sobbed.
But Millicent withdrew herself.
'Please don't fuss me, mother.
I really can't stand being mauled about.'
'Really, Millicent,' said Mr Skinner, with a frown.
He did not think she was behaving very nicely.
Mrs Skinner dabbed her eyes carefully with her handkerchief and with a sigh and a little shake of the head returned to her chair.
Kathleen fidgeted with the long chain she wore round her neck.
'It does seem rather absurd that I should have to be told the details of my brother-in-law's death by a friend.
It makes us all look such fools.
The Bishop wants very much to see you, Millicent; he wants to tell you how much he feels for you.'
She paused, but Millicent did not speak.
'He says that Millicent had been away with Joan and when she came back she found poor Harold lying dead on his bed.'
'It must have been a great shock,' said Mr Skinner.
Mrs Skinner began to cry again, but Kathleen put her hand gently on her shoulder.
'Don't cry, mother,' she said.
'It'll make your eyes red and people will think it so funny.'
They were all silent while Mrs Skinner, drying her eyes, made a successful effort to control herself.
It seemed very strange to her that this very moment she should be wearing in her toque the ospreys that poor Harold had given her.
'There's something else I ought to tell you,' said Kathleen.
Millicent looked at her sister again, without haste, and her eyes were steady, but watchful.
She had the look of a person who is waiting for a sound which he is afraid of missing.
'I don't want to say anything to wound you, dear,' Kathleen went on, 'but there's something else and I think you ought to know it.
The Bishop says that Harold drank.'
'Oh, my dear, how dreadful!' cried Mrs Skinner.
'What a shocking thing to say.
Did Gladys Heywood tell you?
What did you say?'
'I said it was entirely untrue.'
'This is what comes of making secrets of things,' said Mr Skinner, irritably.
'It's always the same.