"I am afraid it is true, Geoff."
"Don't you like it, then?" said the boy. "I thought if you did not like it you would not let it be."
"My dear, my son Theo is a man. I cannot tell him what he must do as your mother does to you. And if I do not like it, it is because he has a good house of his own."
"Ah, the Warren!" said Geoff: then he added, pulling all the reels about in the work-table, and without raising his eyes to her face, "If he is coming, I wish he would come, Mrs. Warrender, then perhaps I should go to school. Don't you think school is a good thing for a boy?"
"Everybody says so, Geoff."
"Yes, I know—it is in all the books. Mrs. Warrender, if—Warrender is coming to live with us, will you be a sort of grandmother to me?"
This startled her very much. She looked at the odd child with a sensation almost of alarm.
"Because," he continued, "I never had one, and I could come and talk to you when things were bad."
"I hope you will never have any experience of things being bad, Geoff."
He gave a glance at her face, his hands still busy among the threads and needles.