One little phrase in this letter came as balm to her troubled spirits after Philip’s remarks.
To Philip she was “the mother”—a person of the last generation trying to bloom out of due season; but to Colonel Lane she was still young and adorable.
Would Philip ever know, ever begin even to understand the sacrifice his mother had made for him?
Philip had heard from Dan’s open window his uncle’s remark about the letter, and found in the fact of Colonel Lane’s writing to his mother another cause for resentment.
“Why didn’t Colonel Lane write to you instead of to my mother?” Philip asked his uncle, who was uncorking a bottle of claret in the dining-room before the others came in.
“That is his business, I suppose,” snapped Uncle Robert.
“I rather think it is mine,” asserted Philip.
“Don’t you make an ass of yourself, Philip,” Uncle Robert said, raising his voice.
Philip turned on his heel. He had more than half a mind to get Soda and go back to the bungalow without lunching.
In the entrance hall he encountered Phyllis, who drew him into the smoking-room.