and drove her home

"Oh, grow up, Justine! I could shake you when you come out with such sophomoric rot! Why not simply say you're not sure the theater has any challenge for you anymore, and that you're homesick?" "All right, all right, all right! Have it any way you bloody well want! I was being my usual flippant self. Sorry I offended!" She jumped to her feet. "Dammit, where are my shoes? What's happened to my coat?" Fritz appeared with both articles of clothing, and drove her home. Rain excused himself from accompanying her, saying he had things to do, but as she left he was sitting by the freshly built up fire, Natasha on his lap, looking anything but busy. "Well," said Meggie to her mother, "I hope we've done the right thing." Fee peered at her, nodded. "Oh, yes, I'm sure of it. The trouble with Justine is that she isn't capable of making a decision like this, so we don't have any choice. We must make it for her." "I'm not sure I like playing God. I think I know what she really wants to do, but even if I could tax her with it face to face, she'd prevaricate." "The Cleary pride," said Fee, smiling faintly. "It does crop up in the most unexpected people." "Go on, it's not all Cleary pride! I've always fancied there was a little dash of Armstrong in it as well." But Fee shook her head. "No. Whyever I did what I did, pride hardly entered into it. That's the purpose of old age, Meggie. To give us a breathing space before we die, in which to see why we did what we did." "Provided senility doesn't render us incapable first," said Meggie dryly. "Not that there's any danger of that in you. Nor in me, I suppose." "Maybe senility's a mercy shown to those who couldn't face retrospection. Anyway, you're not old enough yet to say you've avoided senility. Give it an- other twenty years." "Another twenty years!" Meggie echoed, dismayed. "Oh, it sounds so long!" "Well, you could have made those twenty years less lonely, couldn't you?" Fee asked, knitting industriously. "Yes, I could. But it wouldn't have been worth it, Mum. Would it?" She tapped Justine's letter with the knob of one ancient knitting needle, the slightest trace of doubt in her tone. "I've dithered long enough. Sitting here ever since Rainer came, hoping I wouldn't need to do anything at all, hoping the decision wouldn't rest with me. Yet he was right. In the end, it's been for me to do." "Well, you might concede I did a bit too," Fee protested, injured. "That is, once you surrendered enough of your pride to tell me all about it." "Yes, you helped," said Meggie gently.