“Mother’s rabbit!” said Valerest absently.
“Mr. Tuppy,” said Valerest suddenly, “this can’t go on. You know, this can’t go on.”
“Yap!” said Mr. Tuppy.
“I’m not a chattel,” said Valerest. “To be used just as a man likes. I will not be a chattel.”
The pretty maid came in.
Valerest said: “Come along, Mr. Tuppy. I’ve got a headache. Bed.”
II
Valentine walked. When he had been walking for some time he realised that he was achieving the impossible in combining an excess of motive power with a minimum of progress, for he found himself walking in a direction exactly opposed to that in which his destination lay. He corrected this, and presently stood before a house in Cadogan Gardens. The houses in Cadogan Gardens wear a gentle and sorrowful air, and Valentine grew more depressed than ever.
Now, years before, his guardian had said: “There may come a time, Valentine, when something happens to you about which you will think it impossible that anyone can advise you. But you may be wrong in thinking that. Try me then, if you care to.”
Valentine’s parents had died when he was very young, in one of those marvellously complete accidents arranged by any competent story-teller when he simply must deprive a child at one blow of a mother’s love and a father’s care. Valentine’s parents, however, had in some measure protested against their simultaneous fate, and Valentine’s mother had lived long enough after the accident to appoint Mr. Lapwing her boy’s sole guardian. Mr. Lapwing was the senior partner of the city firm of Lapwing & Lancelot, merchants. And as, quite apart from his regard for Valentine’s parents, he was wealthy, a widower, and childless, it can readily be understood that he eagerly accepted the trust. Although when it is said that he accepted the trust it is not to be implied that Mr. Lapwing tried to take a “father’s place” with the boy. Mr. Lapwing, like so many childless men, knew all about his place with any boy. He was without one theory as to education, but acted merely on a vague idea that the relations between parents and children, whether it was the Victorian one of shaming the joy out of children or the Georgian one of encouraging the joy into vulgarity, had gotten the world into more trouble than anything in history since the fall of Lucifer from Paradise.