“I came back to-day.”
“Aren’t you tired?”
“No. I want to speak to you about Jimmy, if you don’t mind.”
“Please do,” said Dion rather earnestly, struck by a sort of little pang as he remembered the boy’s urgent insistence that his visitor was to come again soon.
“I’m not quite satisfied with his tutor.”
She began to ask Dion’s advice with regard to the boy’s bringing up, explaining that her husband had left that matter in her hands.
“He’s very sorry and ashamed now, poor man, about his attacks on me, and tries to make up from a distance by trusting me completely with Jimmy. I don’t bear him any malice, but of course the link between us is smashed and can’t ever be resoldered. I’m asking you what I can’t ask him because he’s a weak man.”
The implication was obvious and not disagreeable to Dion. He gave advice, and as he did so thought of Robin at ten.
Mrs. Clarke was a remarkably sensible woman, and agreed with his views on boys, and especially with his theory, suddenly discovered in the present heat of conversation, that to give them “backbone” was of even more importance than to develop their intellectual side. She spoke of her son in a way that was almost male.
“He mustn’t be small,” she said, evidently comprehending both soul and body in the assertion. “D’you know Lord Brayfield who was talking to me just now?”