“Isn’t it tea-time?” asked Timmy suddenly.

“Yes, I suppose it is.”

As they walked towards the house together Janet was telling herself uneasily that unless Timmy had met Dr. O’Farrell, it was impossible for him to have learnt through any ordinary human agency that Godfrey Radmore was coming to Beechfield.  Though a devoted, she was not a blind mother, and she was disagreeably aware that her little son never “gave himself away.”  She did not wish to start him on a long romancing explanation which would embody—­if one were to put it in bald English—­a lie.  So she said nothing.

They were close to the door of the house when he again took her aback by suddenly saying:—­“I don’t think Mrs. Crofton can be a very nice sort of lady, Mum.”

(Then he had seen Mrs. Crofton, and she had told him.)

“Why not, Timmy?”

“I have a sort of feeling that she’s horrid.”

“Nonsense!  If only for your godfather’s sake, we must all try and like her.  Besides, my boy, she’s in great trouble.  Her husband only died two or three months ago.”

“Some people aren’t sorry when their husbands die,” remarked Timmy.

She pretended not to hear.  But as they walked through into the hall she heard him say as if to himself:  “Some people are glad.  Mrs. George Pott”—­the woman who kept the local beer-shop—­“danced when her husband died.”

“I wish, Timmy,” said his mother sharply, “that you would not listen to, or repeat low village gossip.”

“Not even if it’s true, Mum?”

“No, not even if it’s true.”

When Janet had first come to Old Place as a bride, eager to shoulder what some of her friends had told her would be an almost intolerable burden, her husband’s six children had been a sad, subdued, nursery-brought-up group, infinitely pathetic to her warm Scotch heart.  At once she had instituted, rather to the indignation of the old nurse who was yet to become in due time her devoted henchwoman, a daily dining-room tea, and the custom still persisted.

And now, to Timmy’s surprise, his mother opened the drawing-room door instead of going on to the dining-room.  “Tell Betty,” she said abruptly, “to pour out tea.  I’ll come on presently.”

She shut the door, and going over to the roomy old sofa, sat down, and leaning back, closed her eyes.  It was a very unusual thing for her to do, but she felt tired, and painfully excited at the thought of Godfrey Radmore’s coming visit.  And as she lay there, there rose up before her, wearily and despondently, the changes which nine years had brought to Old Place.

Janet Tosswill, like all intelligent step-mothers, sometimes speculated as to what her predecessor had really been like.  Her husband’s elder children were so amazingly unlike one another, as well as utterly unlike her own son Timmy.

Betty, the eldest of her step-children, was her favourite, and she had also been deeply attached to Betty’s twin-brother, George.  The two had been alike in many ways, though Betty was very feminine and George essentially masculine, and each of them had possessed those special human attributes which only War seems to bring to full fruition.