“All right, dear.  I’ll bear up.  Do you think they’ll come?”

“Well, I don’t know,” said her son dubiously.  “You see—­I think Miss Penfold thought you ought to have called on them before they came here!  But Mrs. Penfold’s a nice old thing—­she said they’d come.”

“Well, there’s plenty of tea, and I’ll go and call if you want me to.”

“How many years?” laughed Tatham.  “I remember somebody you took eight years to call on, and when you got there you’d forgotten their names.”

“Pure invention.  Never mind, sit down and have your tea.  How many daughters?”

“How many Miss Penfolds?  Well, there are two, and I danced with them both.  But”—­the young man shook his head slowly—­“I haven’t got any use for the elder one.”

“Plain?”

“Not at all—­rather pretty.  But she talks philosophy and stuff.  Not my sort.”

“And the younger one doesn’t talk philosophy?”

“Not she.  She’s a deal too clever.  But she paints—­like a bird.  I’ve seen some of her things.”

“Oh!—­so you’ve been to call?”

Lady Tatham lifted her beautiful eyes upon her son.  Harry Tatham fidgeted with his cup and spoon.

“No.  I was shy, because you hadn’t been.  But—­”

“Harry,” interrupted his mother, her look all vivacity, “did she paint those two water-colours in your sitting-room?”

The boyish, bluntly cut face beside her broke into a charming laugh.

“I bought ’em out of the Edinburgh exhibition.  Wasn’t it ’cute of me?  She told me she had sent them there.  So I just wrote to the secretary and bought them.”

There was silence a moment.  Lady Tatham continued to look at her son.  The eyebrows on her brow, as they slowly arched themselves, expressed the half-amused, half-startled inquiry she did not put into words.  He flushed scarlet, still smiling, and suddenly he laid his hand on hers.

“I say, mummie, don’t tease me, and don’t talk to me about it.  There may be nothing in it—­nothing at all.”

His mother’s face deepened into gravity.

“You take my breath away.  Remember—­there’s only me, Harry, to look after you.”

“I know.  But you’re not like other mothers,” said the youth impatiently.  “You want me to be happy and please myself.  At least if you’d wanted the usual thing, you should have brought me up differently!” He smiled upon her again, patting her hand.

“What do you mean by the ’usual thing’?”

“Well, family and money, I suppose.  As if we hadn’t got enough for ten!”

Lady Tatham hesitated.

“One talks in the air,” she said, frowning a little.  “I can’t promise you, Harry, exactly how I should behave, if—­”

“If what?”

“If you put me to the test.”

“Oh, yes, you can,” he said, affectionately.  Then he got up restlessly from the table.  “But don’t let’s talk about it.  Somehow I can’t stand it—­yet.  I just wanted you to know that I liked them—­and I’d be glad if you’d be civil to them—­that’s all.  Hullo—­here they are!” For as he moved across the room he caught sight, through a side window commanding the park, of a pony-carriage just driving into the wide gravel space before the house.