“O-oh.”
“I’m sorry to disappoint you, Edwin.”
Silence for five minutes.
“Father . . . Keats was a chemist.”
“Keats?” Mr. Ingleby pronounced the word in the same tone as he would have used if he had been saying “Keatings, madam?”
“Oh—Keats. Yes, of course he was. He was consumptive, too. Died in Italy.”
“Yes, father.” Edwin was thankful to leave it at that; thankful that his father knew just so much, even if he didn’t know any more. It would be terrible to know more than your father, to feel that he was a sort of intellectual inferior to you—a boy of fifteen. He would not talk of these things any more.
They walked home in silence. It seemed as if Mr. Ingleby were still worrying about his wife’s tiredness, for when she tried to joke with him at the supper table he was moody and restrained.
“I’m not really a bit overdone,” she protested, kissing his forehead.