It seemed to her that, of the two alternatives, one must imply moral, the other mental, deficiency.
She was glad when he went up to Cambridge, hoping against her own innermost certainties that the new environment might produce a miracle. But it produced instead a new perplexity. Cecil began to ask her for money.
He had never been extravagant before, and he received a very adequate allowance from his grandfather.
“What’s the matter? Is it bills?”
“Well, it is, and it isn’t. There are expenses at college that a lady can’t understand, quite, but——”
“Rubbish, Ces! Don’t try and come that gammon over me,” said Mrs. Aviolet forcibly. “Tell me right out what you want money for, like a good boy.”
“I’ve told you that you wouldn’t understand,” said Cecil in an offended voice.
“Then you’d better go to somebody that will,” retorted his mother.
“Mother, I didn’t mean to vex you. The fact is, I got a lot of books and prints for my room when I first went up, and—and the tradesmen are beginning to bother me a bit. They’re threatening—some of them—to write to grandfather.”
Rose had not sufficient experience of the ways of tradesmen in a university town to reject the explanation, although she instinctively doubted it.