John drew himself apart a little, squaring his young shoulders.
‘I think,’ he said, ‘grandmamma, that I am old enough to write to my mother on my own responsibility, without thinking what even grandfather might say.’
‘Oh! yes,’ she said, looking up at him with a woman’s admiration for masculine independence, ‘that is quite true.’
‘And he would be the last to think otherwise. He would see that it was only natural and right.’
‘Yes,’ she answered, more doubtfully; ‘but he might think he ought to be consulted before you took any step. And that would only be just. What I hope is that Emily, who is so sensible, will take it into her own hands and write that she is coming—without saying anything about an invitation—that would certainly be the best way.’
‘I think,’ said John, ‘that, whether there were an invitation at all or not, she ought to have come long ago to see——’
He paused with a curious sense of the involved situation. Mrs. Sandford echoed his words with a soft, little sigh.
‘Oh! yes, whatever might have happened, she should have come to see her mother, John.’
But that was not what John intended to say.
Mr. Sandford came in shortly after, full of an interview he had just had with Mr. Cattley, who had been corresponding with his brother, the engineer, about John’s plans.