“The boy’s as nervous as a cat and as soft as a woman. He nearly cried with gratitude when I asked him to come. They live opposite the Haslams—Basil Haslam’s a painter, or going to be one.”
“Oh! Minna knows him,” said Mary with sudden malice.
There was a gap in the conversation. Frederic asked Jessie if she would accompany him, and so manœuvred Serge away from the piano. He sang a very sentimental love-ditty and gazed with soft eyes at the back of Jessie’s neck the while.
When she left he insisted on seeing her home with her sister. It took him twenty-five minutes, and when he returned he found Serge buffooning for his mother and making her laugh till she cried.
“Oh! dear. Oh! dear,” she cried. “I haven’t laughed so much for years. You’d never think Serge was a grown man, would you, Frederic?”
“Never,” replied Frederic with asperity.
“My good brother,” said Serge solemnly, “you gave a remarkable description just now of the house of the Lawries—an unhappy, middle-class house. You said it felt like a prison with that raw-boned old Scotswoman for goaler. I’ve been a free man all my life and I feel about this house exactly what you felt about that. There’s fear in it and unfriendliness. I don’t understand why, but I will understand before I’ve done.”
The two brothers were standing close together, and Serge had unwittingly raised his voice. Mrs. Folyat came and laid her hand on his arm and said:
“Please, please don’t quarrel.”