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‘Mother——’
‘Oh—Jocelyn!’
He hugged her tighter than he had ever hugged her. He was raised quite outside his ordinary self, in this joy of getting back to her. And that she should run into his arms—she who never ran, who never showed emotion!
‘You’re not angry, Mother?’ he asked, looking down at her upturned face, still wet and red from her recent weeping.
‘Dreadfully,’ she said, smiling up at him, the strangest transfigured, watery smile.
‘Oh, Mother—I knew you wouldn’t fail me!’ he cried, infinitely relieved, infinitely melted and grateful.
‘Fail you?’
‘Oh, Mother——’
And they hugged again. His mother’s love was a miracle. Her voice was an enchantment. Just to hear the words, the precious right words, said in the precious right voice....
At the tea-table the Canon and his wife, who carefully didn’t look but yet saw, were much shocked. This surely amounted to having duped them as to her real feelings, to having got their sympathy and concern on false pretences.
‘Hadn’t we better go home, John?’ Mrs. Walker inquired of her husband.
‘Much better,’ said the Canon, who didn’t see how to do it.
He looked about for a way of escape.
There wasn’t one, except by climbing over to the cows, and that would involve them in trespass. Besides, retreat should be dignified.
‘But where——?’ Mrs. Luke was whispering, her cheek against Jocelyn’s, while with one hand she still clung hold of his neck. ‘Salvatia——?’
‘In the sitting-room,’ whispered Jocelyn. ‘I put her there. I wanted to see you first alone. Why on earth those Walkers are here to-day of all days——’
He glanced at the scene on the lawn, where the Canon and his wife, marooned at the untidy tea-table, were trying to seem absorbed in something that wasn’t happening up above their heads in the branches of the cedar.
‘You said supper-time——’
‘But I scorched to get to you quickly——’
‘Then you wanted me?’
‘Oh, Mother!’
And he hugged her again, and the Walkers looked about again for a way of escape, and again found none.
Sweet, sweet, delicious beyond dreams, was this restoration to all, to far more than all that had been apparent before, of her boy’s need of her, and of his love. If this was the effect being married had on him, then she was glad he had married. How could she be angry with a wife who brought him closer than ever, more utterly than ever, back to his mother? So, she thought, must the Prodigal Son’s father have felt about the swine his boy had had such a dose of. He wouldn’t have resented them; he must have quite liked them.
‘You’ll try and love her, won’t you, Mother?’ said Jocelyn. ‘She is—very lovable.’
And taking his mother by the hand, he led her to the sitting-room.