"Now, are you two all right?" said Hilda, when she had poured out the tea, and Edwin was carving the fish.

Edwin glanced up.

"I don't want any tea," she said. "I couldn't touch it."

She bent and kissed George, took her gloves from the sideboard, and left the house, the mysterious smile still on her face.

III

Edwin controlled his vexation at this dramatic move. It was only slight, and he had to play the serene omniscient to George. Further, the attractive food helped to make him bland.

"Didn't you know your mother had to go out?" said Edwin, with astounding guile.

"Yes, she told me upstairs," George murmured, "while she was washing me.

She said she had to go and see Auntie Janet again."

The reply was a blow to Edwin. She had said nothing to him, but she had told the boy. Still, his complacency was not overset. Boy and stepfather began to talk, with the mingled freedom and constraint practised by males accustomed to the presence of a woman, when the woman is absent. Each was aware of the stress of a novel, mysterious, and grave situation. Each also thought of the woman, and each knew that the other was thinking of the woman. Each, over a serious apprehension, seemed to be lightly saying: "It's rather fun to be without her for a bit. But we must be able to rely on her return." Nothing stood between them and domestic discomfort. Possible stupidity in the kitchen had no check. As regards the mere household machine, they had a ridiculous and amusing sense of distant danger.

Edwin had to get up in order to pour out more tea. He reckoned that he could both make tea and pour it out with more exact.i.tude than his wife, who often forgot to put the milk in first. But he could not pour it out with the same grace. His brain, not his heart, poured the tea out. He left the tray in disorder. The symmetry of the table was soon wrecked.

"Glad you're going back to school, I suppose?" said Edwin satirically.

George nodded. He was drinking, and he glanced at Edwin over the rim of the cup. He had grown much in twelve months, and was more than twelve months older. Edwin was puzzled by the almost sudden developments of his intelligence. Sometimes the boy was just like a young man; his voice had become a little uncertain. He still showed the greatest contempt for his fingernails, but he had truly discovered the toothbrush, and was preaching it at school among a population that scoffed yet was impressed.

"Yes, I'm glad," he answered.

"Oh! You're glad, are you?"

"Well, I'm glad in a way. A boy does have to go to school, doesn't he, uncle? And the sooner it's over the better. I tell you what I should like--I should like to go to school night and day and have no holidays till it was all done. I sh'd think you could save at least three years with that."

"A bit hard on the masters, wouldn't it be?"

"I never thought of that. Of course it would never be over for them. I expect they'd gradually die."

"Then you don't like school?"

George shook his head.

"Did you like school, uncle?"

Edwin shook his head. They both laughed.

"Uncle, can I leave school when I'm sixteen?"

"I've told you once."

"Yes, I know. But did you mean it? People change so."

"I told you you could leave school when you're sixteen if you pa.s.s the London Matric."

"But what good's the London Matric to an architect? Mr. Orgreave says it isn't any good, anyway."

"When did he tell you that?"

"Yesterday."

"But not so long since you were all for being a stock-breeder!"

"Ah! I was only pretending to myself!" George smiled.

"Well, fetch me my cigarettes off the mantelpiece in the drawing-room."

The boy ran off, eager to serve, and Edwin's glance followed him with affection. George's desire to be an architect had consistently strengthened, save during a brief period when the Show of the North Staffordshire Agricultural Society, held with much splendour at Hanbridge, had put another idea into his noddle--an idea that fed itself richly on glorious bulls and other prize cattle for about a week, and then expired. Indeed, already it had been in a kind of way arranged that the youth should ultimately be articled to Johnnie Orgreave. Among many consequences of Johnnie's defiance to society would probably be the quashing of that arrangement. And there was Johnnie, on the eve of his elopement, chatting to George about the futility of the London Matriculation! Edwin wondered how George would gradually learn what had happened to his friend and inspirer, John Orgreave.

He arrived with the cigarettes, and offered them, and lit the match, and offered that.

"And what have you been doing with yourself all afternoon?" Edwin enquired, between puffs of smoke.

"Oh, nothing much!"

"I thought you were coming to the works and then going down to Auntie Clara's for tea."

"So I was. But mother sent me to Hanbridge."

"Oh," murmured Edwin casually. "So your mother packed you off to Hanbridge, did she?"

"I had to go to the Post Office," George continued. "I think it was a telegram, but it was in an envelope, and some money."

"_In_deed!" said Edwin, with a very indifferent air.

He was, however, so affected that he jumped up abruptly from the table, and went into the darkening, chill garden, ignoring George. George, accustomed to these sudden accessions of interest and these sudden forgettings, went unperturbed his ways.

About half past eight Hilda returned. Edwin was closing the curtains in the drawing-room. The gas had been lighted.

"Johnnie has evidently written to Alicia," she burst out somewhat breathless. "Because Alicia's telegraphed to Janet that she must positively go straight down there and stay with them when she leaves the Home."

"What, on Dartmoor?" Edwin muttered, in a strange voice. The very word "Dartmoor" made him shake.

"It isn't actually on the moor," said Hilda. "And so I shall take her down myself. I've told her all about things. She wasn't a bit surprised. They're a strange lot."

She tried to speak quite naturally, but he knew that she was not succeeding. Their eyes would not meet. Edwin thought:

"How far away we are from this morning!" Hazard and fate, like converging armies, seemed to be closing upon him.