Felix volunteered to fetch a taxi, was thanked and was heartily shaken hands with by Rose through the window, when he had shut the door of the cab upon them.
They left him gazing from the doorstep as they drove away, his eternal feuilleton in his hands.
“That boy worships you, Rose.”
“Poor Felix!” she said leniently. “I shall never forget what a brick he was, years ago, when Ces was ill with croup in the middle of the night.”
“Yes,” said the doctor, rather bitterly, “that’s the way you remember all of us, by what we did, or didn’t do, for Cecil.”
It was very seldom that he allowed himself such an allusion, and the next moment he was ashamed of it.
“I’m sorry—dear.”
“I suppose it’s quite true,” said Rose simply.
When next he spoke, it was in reference to his visit to Cambridge.
“I’ll leave it to you to do whatever seems best,” Rose said. “Poor little Ces! It was a mistake, his going to a public school and university, and all that. He ought to have been put to work young, like the people he comes from.”