“I thank you for your words and for your sympathy, too, Mr. Bathurst.”
“Tell me about your boy—as much as you can—everything!”
It was not a difficult thing that he had asked her.
A mother who has lost her boy—under the circumstances that she had—grasps at the straws of reminiscence to save herself from going under.
“Begin at the beginning,” said Anthony.
She told him. He listened attentively. She got to his cricket—he had played for Oxford at Lords’.
Then Anthony made his first interruption.
“Tell me, Mrs. Prescott—has your son in any game or sport—been ambidextrous?”
Mrs. Prescott showed signs of surprise.
“Think carefully,” he reiterated. “Did he ever bat left-handed or bowl left-handed—did he ever play billiards, for instance, left-handed?”