“Look upon me as your best earthly friend, dear lad, as well as your father, for no one can be more eager to sympathize with you on every point than I am—and have always been. It has always seemed to me that the relationship of father and son could—and should—be an utterly ideal one.
“My love to you, as always, and do write at once. I must not end this without reminding you that business-like habits, which I am so anxious that you should acquire, make it obligatory to acknowledge a cheque by return of post, even were there not other reasons for writing without delay. Anything that you wish treated as confidential will of course be sacred—but that you know already.
“In all lovingness, dear Adrian, I remain your most devoted father,
“F. L. M.”
“Can I say more?” the Canon enquired sadly and anxiously, as Lucilla laid down the letter. To which Lucilla, with restraint, replied by a bald negative.
“I have weighed every word,” her father repeated, with, as she knew, only too much truth.
“Perhaps Adrian may feel that you are taking him too seriously altogether. He sometimes seems——”
“Whom, and what, should I take seriously if not my son, and his earthly and eternal welfare?” the Canon interrupted her rather sternly. “You take a great deal upon yourself, Lucilla, in speaking so. No doubt you say to yourself: ‘I am young, I am of the period, it is for me to act as interpreter between the parent, who is of another generation, and the youth, who belongs to mine.’ But if I read your thought correctly, my child—and I have no doubt that I do—it is an arrogant one, and altogether unworthy of you.”
Lucilla did not explain that no such determination had crossed her mind as the self-sufficient one ascribed to her. She was aware, in common with all the Canon’s children, that he was prone to attribute to them occasionally motives and attitudes of mind strangely and almost incredibly alien to anything to which they could ever reasonably lay claim. Far more often, did he credit them with aspirations and intentions of a quite undeserved sublimity.
Her inward fear, that Adrian would probably leave the major part of his father’s letter unread, she did not put into words.