But the state of trade worsened, and he had a cheque dishonoured.  And then he won the Triennial Gold Medal.  And then at length he did arrange with Mary that she should write to old Samuel and roundly ask him for an extra couple of hundred.  They composed the letter together; and they stated the reasons so well, and convinced themselves so completely of the righteousness of their cause, that for a few moments they looked on the two hundred as already in hand.  Hence the Heidsieck night.  But on the morrow of the Heidsieck night they thought differently.  And George was gloomy.  He felt humiliated by the necessity of the application to his uncle—­the first he had ever made.  And he feared the result.

His fears were justified.

III

They were far more than justified.  Three mornings after the first letter, to which she had made no reply, Mary received a second.  It ran: 

“DEAR MARY,—­And what is more, I shall henceforth pay you three hundred instead of five hundred a year.  If George has not made a position for himself it is quite time he had.  The Gold Medal must make a lot of difference to him.  And if necessary you must economize.  I am sure there is room for economy in your household.  Champagne, for instance.—­Your affectionate uncle, SAMUEL PEEL.

“P.S.—­I am, of course, acting in your best interests.

“S.P.”

This letter infuriated George, so much so that George the younger, observing strange symptoms on his father’s face, and strange sounds issuing from his father’s mouth, stopped eating in order to give the whole of his attention to them.

“Champagne!  What’s he driving at?” exclaimed George, glaring at Mary as though it was Mary who had written the letter.

“I expect he’s been reading that paper,” said Mary.

“Do you mean to say,” George asked scornfully, “that your uncle reads a rag like that?  I thought all his lot looked down on worldliness.”

“So they do,” said Mary.  “But somehow they like reading about it.  I believe uncle has read it every week for twenty years.”

“Well, why didn’t you tell me?”

“The other morning?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, I didn’t want to worry you.  What good would it have done?”

“What good would it have done!” George repeated in accents of terrible disdain, as though the good that it would have done was obvious to the lowest intelligence. (Yet he knew quite well that it would have done no good at all.) “Georgie, take that spoon out of your sleeve.”

And Georgie, usually disobedient, took the porridge-laden spoon out of his sleeve and glanced at his mother for moral protection.  His mother merely wiped him rather roughly.  Georgie thought, once more, that he never in this world should understand grown-up people.  And the recurring thought made him cry gently.