“I wonder,” went on Philip, “that any of you can stand me at any price. I was simply beastly about your book, and I was unutterably selfish about—about my mother and Colonel Lane. I put my great barge of a foot down, and prevented the happiness of those two. Now it is too late.”
“I am not so sure of that,” said Uncle Robert. “I have an idea that you have it in your power to administer the most potent medicine in Colonel Lane’s case.”
“Then, by heaven, I will do it!” cried Philip, understanding. “I’ll go right off now and see my mother.”
“There is no time like the present,” Uncle Robert affirmed. “I will get my hat and go with you as far as the door. A blow on the West Hill will do me good. I miss my swims at this time of the year.”
When you get about half way down Salters Lane you come upon a quiet backwater of a road, in which are old substantial houses, with big, sloping gardens, where century-old trees are bird-haunted.
In one of these houses, near that end of the road which is nearest to St. Clement’s Church, Colonel Lane lived. On the opposite side was The Hermitage, where some nuns who had been banished from France lived, whom Eweretta had found out—to their advantage.
At the small gate that led into the garden of Colonel Lane’s house Uncle Robert left his nephew.
Philip climbed the narrow steps, and then the steep path, bordered still by gloriously-colored chrysanthemums, and knocked upon the old-fashioned door softly. He would not ring.
Mrs. Ransom opened the door.
“He is slightly better, sir,” she whispered excitedly. “He smiled at your mother when she came in. It is the first notice he has taken of anybody.”