“And he stayed to the end of the season?”

“Yes.  Of course the aunts put it down to Sarah.  I dare say it was her doing.  I don’t know why she should wish to rob me of my boy just for—­amusement,” said Lady Mary, rather resentfully.  “But I have not understood Sarah lately; she has seemed so hard and flippant.  You are laughing, John?  I dare say I am jealous and inconsistent.  You are quite right.  One moment I want to think Sarah in earnest—­and willing to marry my boy; and the next I remember that I began to hate his wife the very day he was born.”

“It appears to be the nature of mothers,” said John, indulgently.  “But you will allow me to hope for Peter’s happiness, and quite incidentally, of course, for our own?”

She smiled.  “Seriously, John, I wish you would tell me how he got on in London.”

“He dined with me once or twice, as you know,” said John, “and was very friendly.  I think he was relieved that I made no suggestion of tutors or universities, and that I took his eyeglass for granted.  In short, that I treated him as I should treat any other young man of my acquaintance; whereas he had greatly feared I might presume upon my guardianship to give him good advice.  But I did not, because he is too young to want advice just now, and prefers, like most of us, to buy his own experience.”

“I hope he was really nice to you.  You won’t hide anything?  You’ll tell me exactly?”

“I am hiding nothing.  The lad is a good lad at bottom, and a manly one into the bargain,” said John.  “His defects are of the kind which get up, so to speak, and hit you in the eye; and are, consequently, not of a kind to escape observation.  What is obviously wrong is easiest cured.  He has yet to learn that ‘manners maketh man,’ but he was learning it as fast as possible.  The mistakes of youth are rather pathetic than annoying.”

“Sometimes,” said Lady Mary.

“He fell, very naturally, into most of the conventional errors which beset the inexperienced Londoner,” said John, smiling slightly at the recollection.  “He talked in a familiar manner of persons whose names were unknown to him the day before yesterday; and told well-known anecdotes about well-known people whom he hadn’t had time to meet, as though they had only just happened.  The kind of stories outsiders tell to new-comers.  And he professed to be bored at every party he attended.  I won’t say that the habitue is always too well bred, or too grateful to his entertainers, to do anything of the kind; but he is certainly too wise or too cautious.”

“Perhaps he was bored?” said Lady Mary, wistfully.  “Knowing nobody, poor boy.”