I was the only son of a widow; I was all that my mother had.  And lo!  I had gone and engaged myself to a girl she had never seen, and I had kept her in the dark!  She would certainly be extremely surprised, and she might be a little bit hurt—­just at first.  Anyhow, the situation was the least in the world delicate.

I walked up the whitened front steps of my mother’s little house, just opposite where the electric cars stop, but before I could put my hand on the bell my little plump mother, in her black silk and her gold brooch and her auburn hair, opened to me, having doubtless watched me down the road from the bay-window, as usual, and she said, as usual kissing me—­

‘Well, Philip!  How are you?’

And I said—­

‘Oh!  I’m all right, mother.  How are you?’

I perceived instantly that she was more excited than my arrival ordinarily made her.  There were tears in her smiling eyes, and she was as nervous as a young girl.  She did indeed look remarkably young for a woman of forty-five, with twenty-five years of widowhood and a brief but too tempestuous married life behind her.

The thought flashed across my mind:  ’By some means or other she has got wind of my engagement.  But how?’

But I said nothing.  I, too, was naturally rather nervous.  Mothers are kittle cattle.

‘I’ll tell her at supper,’ I decided.

And she hovered round me, like a sea-gull round a steamer, as I went upstairs.

There was a ring at the door.  She flew, instead of letting the servant go.  It was a porter with my bag.

Just as I was coming down-stairs again there was another ring at the door.  And my mother appeared magically out of the kitchen, but I was beforehand with her, and with a laugh I insisted on opening the front door myself this time.  A young woman stood on the step.

’Please, Mrs Dawson wants to know if Mrs Durance can kindly lend her half-a-dozen knives and forks?’

‘Eh, with pleasure,’ said my mother, behind me.  ’Just wait a minute, Lucy.  Come inside on the mat.’

I followed my mother into the drawing-room, where she kept her silver in a cabinet.

‘That’s Mrs Dawson’s new servant,’ my mother whispered.  ’But she needn’t think I’m going to lend her my best, because I’m not.’

‘I shouldn’t, if I were you,’ I supported her.

And she went out with some second-best in tissue paper, and beamed on Mrs Dawson’s servant with an assumed benevolence.

‘There!’ she exclaimed.  ’And the compliments of the season to your mistress, Lucy.’

After that my mother disappeared into the kitchen to worry an entirely capable servant.  And I roamed about, feeling happily excited, examining the drawing-room, in which nothing was changed except the incandescent light and the picture postcards on the mantelpiece.  Then I wandered into the dining-room, a small room at the back of the house, and here an immense surprise awaited me.