It was the hour of dinner at the Select Boarding Establishment (sep. tables, 3 mins. sea, elec. lt., mod.) where we had spent ten days of our entirely select holiday. Everyone was assembled in the lounge hall waiting for the gong to announce the meal. Mother, basking her soul in the atmosphere of gentility, was chatting with the half-sister of a bishop, who was just remarking that Mother must call on her in town, when a strange fracas was heard at the back of the hall; a moment later a strange figure thrust itself in our midst and looked wildly round.
"Ernest!" murmured Mother faintly. She was a wise woman to know her own child under the circumstances. Perhaps she identified the tent-pole to which he was still clinging. Otherwise he was scarcely recognisable. His hair was wild and unkempt, his clothing torn and damaged. His boots clung to his feet by the uppers only and were held together by fragments of a sponge-bag.
"Mother!" said Ernest, singling her out from amongst the gay throng. The moment was dramatic.
"I—I was arrested," went on Ernest. He spoke in a purely conversational tone, but it's surprising how far the human voice will carry at times. Everybody about the place, including the lift-boy and the Belgian waiter, seemed to hear that remark.
"Arrested?" whispered Mother in reverberating tone-waves.
"Yes. How was I to know that I had pitched my tent on private property and was unwittingly trespassing? They would have prosecuted me if I hadn't——"
"You had better come up to my room and explain there," interposed Mother; and we followed her, a broken woman, to the lift. People fell aside to make a passage for us.
Mother held up until she got to her own room. Then she sat down and cried. "Why did you disgrace us like this?" she asked at last of Ernest. "Was it necessary for you to come here?"
"I had to," said Ernest apologetically. "You see I hadn't any money."
Mother looked up quickly. "But what of the extra ten pounds I insisted on your taking with you in case of emergency?"