“You’ve no headache?” and the tone was as level as if she had not seen that flicker.
“No, mother.”
“Do you sleep well?”
The Reverend Smith Boyd took a drink of water. His hand trembled slightly.
“Excellently.”
Mrs. Boyd surveyed her son with a practised eye.
“I think your appetite’s dropping off a little,” she commented, and then she was shrewdly silent, though the twinkles of humour came back to her eyes by and by. “I don’t think you take enough social diversion,” she finally advised him. “You should go out more. You should ride, walk, but always in the company of young and agreeable people. Because you are a rector is no reason for you to spend your spare time in gloomy solitude, as you have been doing for the past week.”
The Reverend Smith Boyd would have liked to state that he had been very busy, but he had a conscience, which was a nuisance to him. He had spent most of his spare time up in his study, with his chin in his hand.
“You are quite right, mother,” he sombrely confessed, and swallowed two spoonfuls of his soup. It was excellent soup, but, after taking a bite of a wafer, he laid his spoon on the edge of the plate.
“I think I’ll drive you out of the house, Tod,” Mrs. Boyd decided, in the same tones she had used to employ when she had sent him to bed. “I think I’ll send you over to Sargent’s to-night, to sing with Gail.”