"Where ya been, Susan?" said my uncle.
"Birkbeck--Physiology. I'm getting on." She sat down and took off her
gloves. "You're just glass to me," she sighed, and then in a note of
grave reproach: "You old PACKAGE! I had no idea! The Things you've kept
from me!"
Presently they were setting; up the house at Beckengham, and my aunt
intermitted her intellectual activities. The house at Beckengham was
something of an enterprise for them at that time, a reasonably large
place by the standards of the early years of Tono-Bungay. It was a big,
rather gaunt villa, with a conservatory and a shrubbery, a tennis-lawn,
a quite considerable vegetable garden, and a small disused coach-house.
I had some glimpses of the excitements of its inauguration, but not many
because of the estrangement between my aunt and Marion.
My aunt went into that house with considerable zest, and my uncle
distinguished himself by the thoroughness with which he did the
repainting and replumbing. He had all the drains up and most of the
garden with them, and stood administrative on heaps--administrating
whisky to the workmen.
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