"Julia and Alfred all right?" he queried, cheerfully.
"I daresay," she made brief answer.
"But they write to you, don't they?"
"SHE does--sometimes. They seem to be doing themselves
very well, from what she says."
"She'd write oftener, if you'd answer her letters,"
he told her, in tones of confidential reproach.
"Oh, I don't write letters unless I've got something to say,"
she answered, as if the explanation were ample.
The young people were domiciled for the time being at Dusseldorf,
where Alfred had thought he would most like to begin his
Continental student-career, and where Julia, upon the more or
less colourable pretext of learning the language, might enjoy
the mingled freedom and occupation of a home of her own.
They had taken a house for the summer and autumn, and would
do the same in Dresden or Munich, later on, for the winter.
"What I would really have liked," Thorpe confided to his
sister now, "was to have had them both live with me.
They would have been as welcome as the day is long.
I could see, of course, in Alfred's case, that if he's
set on being an artist, he ought to study abroad.
Even the best English artists, he says, do that at
the beginning. So it was all right for him to go.
But Julia--it was different with her--I was rather keen
about her staying.
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