"Please, Jemmie," his wife expostulated. "I'd rather you didn't say too much in front of the servants."
"You're weakening. You're not backing me up. You're perfectly ready to let him in. I tell you he has got to have a lesson."
"But the servants...."
"Bother the servants. I decline to let Geoffrey flout me, because I'm afraid of the servants."
However, Jemmie did so far humor his wife as to imply when he was giving orders to lock up the house, that he and she knew where their son was.
"Although I was in half a mind to forbid anybody in the house to go downstairs and let him in when he does come."
"I'm glad you didn't," Mary said. "I think that would only have made ourselves look ridiculous."
She resolved not to go to sleep, so that when Geoffrey did come back, she should hear him herself and be able to go downstairs and let him in. She felt certain that she should be able to do this and that Jemmie, who had announced his own intention of admitting this errant son, would be fast asleep by that time. Jemmie must be very sleepy by now, for he had been awake ever since dinner.
But Geoffrey did not come back at all that night, and in the morning his mother received a letter.