It must, he felt, be a long time after tea-time, quite late....
He had weighed the advisability of returning quietly to his windowless bedroom under the stairs, putting on his little green apron and emerging with a dutiful sang-froid as if nothing had happened, on the one hand, or of going to the gardens on the other. But tea—with eatables—seemed more probable at the gardens....
He was deflected from the direct route across the park by a long deep trench, that someone had made and abandoned since the previous Sunday morning. He wondered what it was for. It was certainly very ugly. And as he came out by the trees and got the full effect of the façade, he detected a strangely bandaged quality about Shonts. It was as if Shonts had recently been in a fight and got a black eye. Then he saw the reason for this; one tower was swathed in scaffolding. He wondered what could have happened to the tower. Then his own troubles resumed their sway.
He was so fortunate as not to meet his father in the gardens, and he entered the house so meekly that his mother did not look up from the cashmere she was sewing. She was sitting at the table sewing some newly dyed black cashmere.
He was astonished at her extreme pallor and the drooping resignation of her pose.
“Mother!” he said, and she looked up convulsively and stared, stared with bright round astonished eyes.
“I’m sorry, mother, I’aven’t been quite a good steward’s-room boy, mother. If I could ’ave another go, mother....”
He halted for a moment, astonished that she said nothing, but only sat with that strange expression and opened and shut her mouth.
“Reely—I’d try, mother....”
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