"Well, it will be his own fault, won't it?"
"We haven't heard the whole story yet."
"I know; but what's the good of discussing it. He knew he was doing something he ought not to be doing. He can't expect not to have to pay for it."
And there was another pause.
"He was doing so well, too," she said.
"He would have been a prefect after the summer. He would have been captain of his house. We should have been so proud of him."
"And it's all over now."
They did not discuss the actual trouble. He knew that on the next day he would have to go over the whole thing with Roland, and he wanted to be able to think it out in quiet. They were practical people, who had spent the last fifteen years discussing the practical affairs of ways and means. They had come nearest to each other when they had sat before their account-books in the evening, balancing one column with another, and at the end of it looking each other in the face, agreeing that they would have to "cut down this expense," and that they could "save a little there." The love of the senses had died out quickly between them, but its place had been taken by a deep affection, by the steady accumulation of small incidents of loyalty and unselfishness, of difficulties faced and fought together. They had never ventured upon first principles. They had fixed their attention upon the immediate necessities of the moment.
And now, although Roland's moral welfare was a deep responsibility to them, they spoke only of his career and of how they must shape it to fit the new requirements. Mr Whately thought that he might be able to find a post for him in the bank. But his wife was very much against it.
"Oh, no, dear, that would be terrible. Roland could never stand it; he's such an open-air person. I can't bear to think of him cooped up at a desk all his days."