‘It sounds like a servant,’ said Jocelyn, who was sensitive because of the tin trunk (got rid of in Truro,) and the stiff nightgowns (got rid of in Truro too,) and several other distinct and searing memories.
‘Servant? You absurd boy. She’s a duchess, who happens not to have been born right—the most beautiful duchess the world would ever have seen. Now never,’ said Mrs. Luke with much seriousness—she felt she must take this situation thoroughly in hand—‘never, never let such a word as the one you just used enter your mind in connection with Salvatia again, my dear Jocelyn.’
No, he wouldn’t tell his mother about the way Sally had seemed to drift, as if drawn, towards the Cupps, quite obviously wanting to make friends with them, nor about the way she actually had made friends with the spotted mechanic in the Truro garage. And as for Mr. Pinner, for whom he had a curious distaste and of whom the remembrance was definitely grievous to him, Jocelyn wouldn’t tell his mother about him either. He would skim over Mr. Pinner. Why intrude him? Why dot the i’s of Sally’s beginnings? His mother had heard for herself how she spoke, and knew approximately what her father must be like. Let her knowledge remain approximate.
So they went together into the garden—again Mrs. Luke instinctively sought Nature,—Jocelyn determined to keep Mr. Pinner out of his mother’s consciousness, and Mrs. Luke determined to get Mr. Thorpe into his.
§
Arm in arm they paced up and down what Mr. Thorpe persisted in calling the drying ground, in spite of Mrs. Luke’s steady reference to it as the lawn, and Jocelyn said, ‘Her family come from Islington.’
‘Suburbans. Like ourselves,’ replied his mother, with a really heavenly tact, Jocelyn thought.
But she wasn’t thinking of what he was saying and what she was answering; she was seeking a formula for Mr. Thorpe. And, to gain yet a further moment’s grace,—queer how nervous she felt—she stopped a moment in front of the Kerria japonica in the angle of the wall by the kitchen window, and asked him if he didn’t think it was doing very well that year.
‘Wonderful,’ said Jocelyn. ‘It’s all perfect.’
He sighed with contentment at his mother’s progressive and amazing tactfulness. How had she not from the first moment grasped the situation, and needed no explanation at all. Now she was grasping the Pinners, and dismissing them without a single question. ‘Suburbans. Like ourselves.’ At that moment Jocelyn positively adored his mother.