“You’re only ninety, are you?” she said. “Or is it ninety-one?”
“Ninety,” said Peter, grinning.
CHAPTER XIV
The grin soon cleared off. His father rose from the sofa on which he had been so elegantly resting, as Peter entered, and clasped his hand, though he had seen him at tea a couple of hours before.
“Have you heard from your mother?” he asked. “My loved and lost one?” He smoothed his velveteen coat as he spoke.
My loved and lost one! The velveteen coat!... The little demons swarmed into Peter’s soul—the demons of ridicule and cynicism and contempt and all the host of such. But rebel and ridicule as he might, he knew that he had been sham and charlatan on an immeasurably greater scale than his father.
“I had a report of her a couple of days ago,” he said. “Just a message through her solicitors.”
Mr. Mainwaring put the tips of his fingers in a neat row into his mouth, as if, in his suspense, to gnaw the nails of them. But he committed no such feat of violence. He merely sucked them, and took them out again.
“Tell me,” he said.
Peter tried to evoke any sort of kindliness or sympathy from his mind, and failed.