“Oh, you were thinking of that other time. There is a great deal of difference since that other time. It is nearly a year since—and now I do a great many things by myself,” said the boy, looking at her keenly. “I am let to go wherever I please.”
“Because you are now old enough to take care of yourself,” said Mrs. Warrender, “with the help of Black.”
“Yes,” said Geoff, “how did you know? I have got Black. But there is more in it than that. Would mamma have ruined me, if she had kept on always coddling me, Mrs. Warrender? that is what the servants say.”
“My dear, one never allows the servants to say things of that kind. You should understand your mother’s meaning much better than they can do.”
“I see a great deal of the servants now,” said Geoff—then he corrected himself with a look of sudden recollection—“that is, I am afraid I disobey mamma, Mrs. Warrender. I am rather fond of the servants, they are more amusing than other people. I go to the stables often when I know I oughtn’t. To know you oughtn’t, and yet to do it, is very bad, don’t you think?”
“I am afraid it is, Geoff. Don’t you have any lessons now?”
“They say this is holiday time,” said the boy. “Of course I am glad of the holidays, but it is a little stupid too, not having anyone to play with—but I may come out a great deal more than I used to. And that is a great advantage, isn’t it? I read too, chiefly stories; but a whole day is a very long time, don’t you think so? I did not say where I was coming this afternoon, in case the pony might get tired, or Black turn cross, or something, but it appears Black likes to come to Highcombe, he has friends here.” The boy had come close to Mrs. Warrender’s worktable, and was lifting up and putting down again the reels of silk, the thimbles and scissors. He went on with his occupation for some time very gravely, his back turned to the light. At length he said, “I want you to tell me one thing. They say Warrender is coming to live at our house.”
“I am afraid it is true, Geoff.”
“Don’t you like it, then?” said the boy. “I thought if you did not like it you would not let it be.”
“My dear, my son Theo is a man. I cannot tell him what he must do as your mother does to you. And if I do not like it, it is because he has a good house of his own.”
“Ah, the Warren!” said Geoff: then he added, pulling all the reels about in the worktable, and without raising his eyes to her face, “If he is coming, I wish he would come, Mrs. Warrender, then perhaps I should go to school. Don’t you think school is a good thing for a boy?”
“Everybody says so, Geoff.”
“Yes, I know—it is in all the books. Mrs. Warrender, if—Warrender is coming to live with us, will you be a sort of grandmother to me?”
This startled her very much. She looked at the odd child with a sensation almost of alarm.
“Because,” he continued, “I never had one, and I could come and talk to you when things were bad.”
“I hope you will never have any experience of things being bad, Geoff.”
He gave a glance at her face, his hands still busy among the threads and needles.
“Oh no, never, perhaps—but, Mrs. Warrender, if—Warrender is coming to Markland to live, I wish he would do it now, directly. Then it would be settled what was going to be done with me—and—and other things.” Geoff’s face twitched more than ever, and she understood that the reason why he did not look at her was because his little eyelids were swollen with involuntary tears. “There are a lot of things—that perhaps would get—settled then,” he said.
“Geoff,” she said, putting her arm round him, “I am afraid you don’t like it any more than I do, my poor boy.”
Geoff would not yield to the demoralising influence of this caress. He held himself away from her, swaying backwards, resisting the pressure of her arm. His eyelids grew bigger and bigger, his mouth twitched and quivered. “Oh, it is not that,” he said, with a quiver in his voice, “if mamma likes it. I am only little, I am rather backward, I am not—company enough for mamma.”
“That must be one of the things that the servants say. You must not listen, Geoff, to what the servants say.”
“But it is quite true. Mamma knows just exactly what is best. I used to be the one that was always with her—and now it is Warrender. He can talk of lots of things—things I don’t understand. For I tell you I am very backward, I don’t know half, nor so much as half, what some boys do at my age.”
“That is a pity, perhaps; but it does not matter, Geoff, to your—to the people who are fond of you, my dear.”
“Oh yes, it does,” cried the boy; “don’t hold me, please! I am a little beast, I am not grateful to people nor anything! the best thing for me will just be to be sent to school.” Here Geoff turned his back upon her abruptly, forced thereto by the necessity of getting rid of those tears. When he had thus relieved himself, and cleared his throat of the climbing sorrow that threatened to shake his voice, he came back and stood once more by her table. The great effort of swallowing down all that emotion had made him pale, and left the strained look which the passage of a sudden storm leaves both upon the human countenance and the sky. “They say it’s very jolly at Eton,” he resumed
