A knock on the door broke the thread of her reflection.  It was a low-sounding knock, and she answered the summons herself, because she thought it might be Rosy’s.

It was not Lady Anstruthers who stood outside, but Ughtred, who balanced himself on his crutches, and lifted his small, too mature, face.

“May I come in?” he asked.

Here was the unexpected again, but she did not allow him to see her surprise.

“Yes,” she said.  “Certainly you may.”

He swung in and then turned to speak to her.

“Please shut the door and lock it,” he said.

There was sudden illumination in this, but of an order almost whimsical.  That modern people in modern days should feel bolts and bars a necessity of ordinary intercourse was suggestive.  She was plainly about to receive enlightenment.  She turned the key and followed the halting figure across the room.

“What are you afraid of?” she asked.

“When mother and I talk things over,” he said, “we always do it where no one can see or hear.  It’s the only way to be safe.”

“Safe from what?”

His eyes fixed themselves on her as he answered her almost sullenly.

“Safe from people who might listen and go and tell that we had been talking.”

In his thwarted-looking, odd child-face there was a shade of appeal not wholly hidden by his evident wish not to be boylike.  Betty felt a desire to kneel down suddenly and embrace him, but she knew he was not prepared for such a demonstration.  He looked like a creature who had lived continually at bay, and had learned to adjust himself to any situation with caution and restraint.

“Sit down, Ughtred,” she said, and when he did so she herself sat down, but not too near him.

Resting his chin on the handle of a crutch, he gazed at her almost protestingly.

“I always have to do these things,” he said, “and I am not clever enough, or old enough.  I am only eleven.”

The mention of the number of his years was plainly not apologetic, but was a mere statement of his limitations.  There the fact was, and he must make the best of it he could.

“What things do you mean?”

“Trying to make things easier—­explaining things when she cannot think of excuses.  To-day it is telling you what she is too frightened to tell you herself.  I said to her that you must be told.  It made her nervous and miserable, but I knew you must.”

“Yes, I must,” Betty answered.  “I am glad she has you to depend on, Ughtred.”

His crutch grated on the floor and his boy eyes forbade her to believe that their sudden lustre was in any way connected with restrained emotion.