"I have learnt to-day," she explained, "that he has a horror of high places."
"You mean that on the cliffs of, as it might be, Bridlington some sudden unbridled terror may cause him to hurl himself—"
"You will never get him to the cliffs of Bridlington. He can't even look out of a first-floor window. He won't walk up the gentlest slope. That is why he is always playing with the lawn-mower."
The Earl frowned and tapped on his desk with a penholder.
"This is very grave news, Gertie," he said. "How is it that the boy comes to have this unmanly weakness?"
"It seems he has always had it."
"He should have been taken in hand. Even now perhaps it is not too late.
It is our duty to wean him from these womanish apprehensions."
"Too late. Unless you carried him up there in a sack—?"
"No, no," protested the Earl vigorously. "My dear, the seventeenth Earl of Blight carrying a sack! Impossible!"
For a little while there was silence while they brooded over the tragic news.