“Henry,” said Mrs. Roughsedge to her husband, “I think it would do you good to walk to Beechcote.”

“No, my dear, no!  I have many proofs to get through before dinner.  Take Hugh.  Only—­”

Dr. Roughsedge, smiling, held up a beckoning finger.  His wife approached.

“Don’t let him fall in love with that young woman.  It’s no good.”

“Well, she must marry somebody, Henry.”

“Big fishes mate with big fishes—­minnows with minnows.”

“Don’t run down your own son, sir.  Who, pray, is too good for him?”

“The world is divided into wise men, fools, and mothers.  The characters of the first two are mingled—­disproportionately—­in the last,” said Dr. Roughsedge, patiently enduring the kiss his wife inflicted on him.  “Don’t kiss me, Patricia—­don’t tread on my proofs—­go away—­and tell Jane not to forget my tea because you have gone out.”

Mrs. Roughsedge departed, and the doctor, who was devoted to her, sank at once into that disorderly welter of proofs and smoke which represented to him the best of the day.  The morning he reserved for hard work, and during the course of it he smoked but one pipe.  A quotation from Fuller which was often on his lips expressed his point of view:  “Spill not the morning, which is the quintessence of the day, in recreation.  For sleep itself is a recreation.  And to open the morning thereto is to add sauce to sauce.”

But in the afternoon he gave himself to all the delightful bye-tasks:  the works of supererogation, the excursions into side paths, the niggling with proofs, the toying with style, the potterings and polishings, the ruminations, and rewritings and refinements which make the joy of the man of letters.  For five-and-twenty years he had been a busy Cambridge coach, tied year in and year out to the same strictness of hours, the same monotony of subjects, the same patient drumming on thick heads and dull brains.  Now that was all over.  A brother had left him a little money; he had saved the rest.  At sixty he had begun to live.  He was editing a series of reprints for the Cambridge University Press, and what mortal man could want more than a good wife and son, a cottage to live in, a fair cook, unlimited pipes, no debts, and the best of English literature to browse in?  The rural afternoon, especially, when he smoked and grubbed and divagated as he pleased, was alone enough to make the five-and-twenty years of “swink” worth while.

Mrs. Roughsedge stayed to give very particular orders to the house-parlormaid about the doctor’s tea, to open a window in the tiny drawing-room, and to put up in brown paper a pair of bed-socks that she had just finished knitting for an old man in one of the parish-houses.  Then she joined her son, who was already waiting for her—­impatiently—­in the garden.

Hugh Roughsedge had only just returned from a month’s stay in London, made necessary by those new Army examinations which his soul detested.  By dint of strenuous coaching he had come off moderately victorious, and had now returned home for a week’s extra leave before rejoining his regiment.  One of the first questions on his tongue, as his mother instantly noticed, had been a question as to Miss Mallory.  Was she still at Beechcote?  Had his mother seen anything of her?