She had on her black Sunday hat and was buttoning her gloves.
“I’m going to church.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Trenchard, “I think we shall be the only ones. Unless Katherine’s coming.”
“No, I’m not coming,” said Katherine.
He walked away with his mother, feeling self-conscious with her, as he always did, but to-night, whether from some especial sense of gloom, of dripping, wet trees, of wind and rain, or from some real perception of agitation in his mother, he felt a strong impulse of protection towards her. He would have liked to have put his arm through hers, to have defied the world to harm her, to run and fetch and carry for her, to help her in any possible way. He had felt this before, but he had never known how to begin, and he knew that any demonstration of any kind would embarrass them both terribly.
Mrs. Trenchard said things like:
“Those two shirts of yours, Henry—those last two blue ones—have shrunk terribly. I’ll never go to that place in Oxford Street again. They’ve shrunk so dreadfully,” or “If you think you’d rather have those thicker socks next time you must tell me.... Do you like them better?”
Henry was always vexed by such questions. He thought that he should have been managing his own clothes at his age, and he also could not be bothered to give his mind seriously to socks.
“I don’t know, mother.”
“But you must care for one or the other.”