We were all hard at it in the study. Aunt Gerty was making a pink surah blouse all over the study table and being prompter as well. Mr. Aix was in George’s swivel-chair, and Mother standing in front of him. George was on us in a moment, just as Mr. Aix had closed the manuscript with a slap.
“Our child comes on bravely!” he was just saying to Mother, as George appeared in the doorway with his cigarette in his mouth.
Aunt Gerty whispered to Mother, “I’ll bet you Lord Scilly has had him kicked out of the house. Go on that tack!” and bolted into the hall, forgetting her pink surah spread all over the desk.
“Welcome back, old fellow!” said Mr. Aix, turning round in the swivel-chair and putting a protecting paw over Aunt Gerty’s blouseries. They would be sure to irritate George, he knew; so they did. George turned quite white with temper and flung his coat off, and Mother caught it across her arm as if she had been a servant. There seemed to be a great noise in the hall, and Polly came in looking disgusted, as servants always do when it is a question of not paying one’s just debts.
She began “If you please, sir, the cabman——” but her voice was quite drowned between the cabman relieving his mind in the hall outside and George inside. He seemed bewildered, but able to swear all the time.
“Won’t you pay your cab, George?” said Mother gently, “and then you can abuse me at your leisure!”
Mr. Aix went to pay the man, and I thought I had better get out of the room with him. George was sitting bolt upright in his chair, and Mother like a little school-girl before him. I don’t know what they said to each other, but George wouldn’t come out to dinner, but had a plate sent in.
Mother didn’t alter her habits, but went to the theatre with Mr Aix.
George’s plate of dinner came out untouched. After all it was my own father, and he had come all the way from Wiltshire, and perhaps had been kicked out of “The Hutch” as Aunt Gerty said. I knew enough of Lady Scilly to know how changeable she is, and perhaps it was only her novel she cared for. I went to him, as bold as a lion.
He was sitting still where he had been before dinner, only his head was on his hands among Aunt Gerty’s blouse trimmings.