CHAPTER XE
VELINA, having conducted herself irreproachably in trying circumstances during the week-end, pleaded the call of public duties, and left The Grange on the Monday morning. A divinely appointed International Sanitary Congress took her away, a fortnight later, to Stockholm. The cheerful John Roberts who, besides being Chairman of the Greenwich Borough Council, was serving his year as the Right Worshipful Master of the Plumbers’ Company of the City of London, was also one of the delegates. He and Evelina had been close friends for some years. Her absence from Greenwich had perhaps made his heart grow fonder. They were dear companions. They walked hand-in-hand through sewage Systems as through fields of asphodel, and enjoyed themselves enormously.
“You are really missing an educati
