Nicky at the seaside was troublesome and happy, and they thought he had forgotten.  But on the first evening at Hampstead, as Frances kissed him Good-night, he said:  “Shall I have to see Mr. Parsons to-morrow?”

Frances said:  “Yes.  Of course.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Nonsense, you must get over that.”

“I—­can’t, Mummy.”

“Oh, Nicky, can’t you forgive poor Mr. Parsons?  When he was so unhappy?”

Nicky meditated.

“Do you think,” he said at last, “he really minded?”

“I’m sure he did.”

“As much as you and Daddy?”

“Quite as much.”

“Then,” said Nicky, “I’ll forgive him.”

But, though he forgave John and Mr. Parsons and even God, who, to do him justice, did not seem to have been able to help it, Nicky did not forgive himself.

Yet Frances never could think why the sight of mustard and cress made Nicky sick.  Neither did Mr. Parsons, nor any schoolmaster who came after him understand why, when Nicky knew all the rest of the verb [Greek:  erchomai] by heart he was unable to remember the second aorist.

He excellent memory, but there was always a gap in it just there.

VI

In that peace and tranquillity where nothing ever happened, Jerry’s violent death would have counted as an event, a date to reckon by; but for three memorable things that happened, one after another, in the summer and autumn of ’ninety-nine:  the return of Frances’s brother, Maurice Fleming, from Australia where Anthony had sent him two years ago, on the express understanding that he was to stay there; the simultaneous arrival of Anthony’s brother, Bartholomew, and his family; and the outbreak of the Boer War.

The return of Morrie was not altogether unforeseen, and Bartholomew had announced his coming well beforehand, but who could have dreamed that at the end of the nineteenth century England would be engaged in a War that really was a War?  Frances, with the Times in her hands, supposed that that meant more meddling and muddling of stupid politicians, and that it would mean more silly speeches in Parliament, and copy, at last, for foolish violent, pathetic and desperate editors, and breach of promise cases, divorces and fires in paraffin shops reduced to momentary insignificance.

But as yet there was no war, nor any appearance that sensible people interpreted as a sign of war at the time of Morrie’s return.  It stood alone, as other past returns, the return from Bombay, the return from Canada, the return from Cape Colony, had stood, in its sheer awfulness.  To Frances it represented the extremity of disaster.

They might have known what was coming by Grannie’s behaviour.  One day, the day when the Australian mail arrived, she had subsided suddenly into a state of softness and gentleness.  She approached her son-in-law with an air of sorrowful deprecation; she showed a certain deference to her daughter Louie; she was soft and gentle even with Emmeline and Edith.