“Well, I never have, certainly,” said Mr. Upton. “But what can it be?”
“He probably went up to Lord’s, and forgot all about his doctor.”
“I hope not! You’re too down on him, Horace.”
“If there was nobody to put him up it was the game to go back to school.”
“But he’s said to have gone to some hotel.”
“I don’t suppose he did,” said Horace. “I expect he got back somehow.”
The question was still under discussion when a telegram from Mr. Spearman settled it. Where was Tony? He had not returned when due the day before, and his friends in London wired that they knew nothing about him.
“What friends?” cried Mr. Upton, in a fury. “Why the devil couldn’t Spearman give their names or Bompas the addresses he talked about?”
Horace could only think of Mr. Coverley or “that Knaggs crowd.” Neither he nor Fred had been at Coverley’s school, and young Tony’s friends were by no means theirs.
Mr. Upton thought Lettice would know, and was going to speak to her on the telephone when Horace reminded him of his own remark about its being “a man’s matter”; it was beginning to look, even to Horace, like a serious one as well, and in his opinion it was much better that neither his mother nor his sister should know anything at all about it before it was absolutely necessary. Horace now quoted his mother’s dream as the devil did Scripture, but adduced sounder arguments besides; he was speaking quite nicely of them both, for instance, when he declared that Lettice was wrapped up in Tony, and would be beside herself if she thought any evil had overtaken him. It would be simply impossible for her to hide her anxiety from the mother on whom she also waited hand and foot. Mr. Upton disagreed a little there; he had good reason to believe in Lettice’s power of suppressing her own feelings; but for her own sake, and particularly in view of that discredited dream, he now decided to keep his daughter in the dark as long as his wife.