What more could Susan say—at least just then. She went to bed a very disturbed, unhappy woman.
Towards the end of the week Sophy sent Bobby over to the Hiltons' for a day, as she had promised. He returned that evening in quite an agitated state of mind. He rather enjoyed being with his grandmother occasionally. As he told Sophy: "I don't like Granny much—but I almost love her sometimes—when she's telling me 'bout father, and what a great man he would have been if he'd lived—and what jolly things all my grandfathers did for England. I think Granny's something like machinery. You're awful interested in it ... but you don't want to get too near to it."
This evening the cause of his excitement was shown plainly by his remarks to his mother when she went in to "tuck him up."
"I tell you what it is, mother," said he. "It's a awful responsibility for a chap having not to disappoint his mother or his only gran'mother, either of 'em. Now I was just thinkin'—Granny's so set on my bein' a statesman—and you'd like me to be a great writer. Well— I might be both! Dizzy was, you know. Don't you think if I was a great novelist and Prime Minister, both at once, that would be a solution?"
Sophy hugged him and replied with perfect gravity that she thought it would certainly be "a solution."
"Well, I'm glad," sighed Bobby, settling back upon his pillow. "'Cause if you hadn't thought so, I don't think I'd have slept a wink to-night. I'll write Granny first thing to-morrow. She's leaving after lunch. She told me to be sure to tell you so you'd send your letters to her at Dynehurst when you wrote."
But three days later, about six o'clock in the afternoon, a motor from the Hiltons' swept again round the lawn at Breene, and in this motor was Lady Wychcote.
This time, it happened to be Sophy and Amaldi who were sitting out under the big beech. Bobby was there, too. He was leaning with both arms on Amaldi's knee, and looking up eagerly into the young man's face. Amaldi had been telling him some of the adventures of Orlando Furioso.
This time Amaldi had not come down from London for the day, but had also motored over with Olive Arundel from her country place some fifteen miles distant. Susan and Olive were in the house, superintending the hanging of an old print that the latter had brought over for Sophy's writing-room.
Sophy was frankly surprised to see her mother-in-law.