"Georgie! Georgie!"
His mother's voice drifted to him tentatively.
"Come and get your supper."
He hid the broken crop and went out. His father glanced disapproval.
"You'd do better to wear Old Planter's clothes while you can. It's doubtful when you'll buy any more of your own."
George sat down without answering. Since his return from the ride that afternoon his parents and he had scarcely spoken the same language, and by this time he understood there was no possible interpreter. It made him choke a little over his food.
The others were content to share his silence. His father seemed only anxious to have him away; but his mother, he fancied, looked at him with something like sorrow.
Afterward he fled from that nearly voiceless scrutiny and paced one of the park paths, counting the minutes until he could answer Old Planter's summons. He desired to have the interview over so that he could snap every chain binding him to Oakmont, every chain save the single one Sylvia's contempt had unwittingly forged. He could not, moreover, plan his immediate future with any assurance until he knew what the great man wanted.
"Only to make me feel a little worse," he decided. "What else could he do?"
What, indeed, could a man of Planter's wealth and authority not do? It was a disturbing question.