"I am not so sure that I should always receive the same answer," replies the other, with a forced laugh—"but stop a bit!"—seeing a decided quickening of speed in his friend's upward movements—"my mother is asking for you; she has been asking for you all the afternoon; she wants to speak to you before she goes."
"Goes?"
"Yes, she is off at seven o'clock to-morrow morning—back to England: she had a telegram to-day to say that her old aunt, the one who brought her up, has had a second stroke. No!"—seeing Jim begin to arrange his features in that decorous shape of grave sympathy which we naturally assume on such occasions—"it is no case of great grief; the poor old woman has been quite silly ever since her last attack; but mother thinks that she ought to be there, at—at the end; to look after things, and so forth."
There is an alertness, a something that expresses the reverse of regret in the tone employed by Mrs. Byng's son in this detailed account of the causes of her imminent departure, which, even if his thoughts had not already sprung in that direction, would have set Burgoyne thinking as to the mode in which the young man before him is likely to employ the liberty that his parent's absence will restore to him.
"I offered to go with her," says Byng, perhaps discerning a portion at least of his companion's disapprobation.
"And she refused?"
Byng looks down, and begins to kick the banisters—they are still on the stairs—idly with one foot.
"Mother is so unselfish that it is always difficult to make out what she really wishes; but—but I do not quite see of what use I should be to her if I did go."
There is a moment's pause; then Burgoyne speaks, in a dry, hortatory elder brother's voice:
"If you take my advice you will go home."