Richard felt hot and subsided suddenly, but before he did so his eyes turned to Joan where she sat silent at her mother's side. She wondered whether he thought that the conversation could have any possible bearing on her personally, whether perhaps it had such a bearing. She glanced shyly at her mother; Mrs. Ogden looked decidedly cross.
"I hope," she said emphatically, "that neither of my girls will want to go to a university; they would never do so with my approval."
"Oh, but——" Richard began, then stopped, for he had caught the warning in Joan's eye. "I came to say," he stammered, "that if you'll come into the library, Joan, I'll show you those prints of Father's, the sporting ones I told you about." He stood looking awkward for a moment, then turned as if expecting her to follow him.
"May I go, Mother?"
But Joan was already on her feet, what was the good of saying "No" since she so obviously wanted to go? Mrs. Ogden sighed, she looked at Lawrence appealingly. "They are so much in advance of me," she said as Joan hurried away.
Sympathy welled up in him; he let it appear in his eyes, together with a look of admiration; as he did so he was thinking that the touch of grey in her hair became Mrs. Ogden.
She thought: "How funny, the boy's getting sentimental!" A little flutter of pleasure stirred her for a moment. After all she was not so immensely old and not so passée either, and it was not unpleasant to have a young male creature sympathizing with you and looking at you as though he admired and pitied you—in fact it was rather soothing. Then she thought: "I wonder where Joan is," and suddenly she felt tired of Lawrence Benson; she wished that he would go away so that she might have an excuse for moving; she felt restless.
2
In the library Joan was listening to Richard. He stood before her with his hair ruffled, his face flushed and eager.
"Joan! I don't know you awfully well, and of course you're only a kid as yet, but Elizabeth says you're clever—and don't you let yourself be bottled."