“I don’t think papa can be coming, Geoff, and it is time you had your tea.”
“Never mind me. I’ll go and take it by myself, if you want me to, and you can wait here.”
“Why?” she said. “It will not bring him home a moment sooner, as you and I know.”
“No, but it feels as if it made him come; and you can see as far as the gate. It takes a long time to drive up the avenue. Oh yes, stop here; you will like that best.”
“I am so silly,” she said, which was her constant excuse. “When you are grown up, Geoff, I shall always be watching for you.”
“That you shan’t,” said the boy. “I’ll never leave you. You have had enough of that.”
“Oh yes, my darling, you will leave me. I shall want you to leave me. A boy cannot be always with his mother. Come, now, I am going to be strong-minded. Let us go in. I am a little tired, I think.”
“Perhaps the funeral was later than he thought,” said the boy.
“Perhaps. It was very kind of papa to go. He does not like things of that kind; and he was not overfond of Mr. Warrender, who, though he was very good, was a little dull. Papa doesn’t like dull people.”
“No. Do you like Theo Warrender, mamma?”
“Well enough,” said Lady Markland. “I don’t know him very much.”
“I like him,” said the child. “He knows a lot: he told me how to do that Latin. He is the sort of man I should like for my tutor.”
“But he is a gentleman, Geoff. I mean, he would never be a tutor. He is as well off as we are—perhaps better.”
“Are men tutors only when they are not well off?”
“Well, dear, generally when they require the money. You could not expect young Mr. Warrender to come here and take a great deal of trouble, merely for the pleasure of teaching you.”
“Why not?” said Geoff. “Isn’t it a fine thing to teach children? It was you that said so, mamma.”
“For me, dear, that am your mother; but not for a gentleman who is not even a relation.”
“Gentlemen, to be sure, are different,” said Geoff, with an air of deliberation. “There’s papa, for instance—”
His mother threw up her hand suddenly. “Hark, Geoff! Do you hear anything?”
They had come indoors while this talk was going on, and were now seated in a large but rather shabby sitting-room, which was full of Geoff’s toys and books. The windows were wide open, but the sounds from without came in subdued; for this room was at the back of the house, and at some distance from the avenue. They were both silent for some moments, listening, and then Lady Markland said, with an air of relief, “Papa is coming. I hear the sound of the phaeton.”
“That is not the phaeton, mamma; that is only one horse,” said Geoff, whose senses were very keen. When Lady Markland had listened a little longer, she acquiesced in this opinion.
“It will be someone coming to call,” she said, with an air of resignation; and then they went on with their talk.
“Gentlemen are different; they don’t take the charge of the children like you. However, in books,” said Geoff, “the fathers very often are a great deal of good; they tell you all sorts of things. But books are not very like real life; do you think they are? Even Frank, in Miss Edgeworth, though you say he is so good, doesn’t do things like me. I mean, I should never think of doing things like him; and no little girl would ever be so silly. Now, mamma, say true, what do you think? Would any little girl ever be so silly as to want the big bottle out of a physic shop? Girls may be silly, but not so bad as that.”
“Perhaps, let us hope, she didn’t know so much about physic shops, as you call them, as you do, my poor boy. I wonder who can be calling today, Geoff! I should have thought that everybody near would be thinking of the Warrenders, and—It is coming very fast, don’t you think? But it does not sound like the phaeton.”
“Oh no, it is not the phaeton. I’ll go and look,” said Geoff. He came back in a moment, crying, “I told you—it’s a brougham! Coming at such a pace!”
“I wonder who it can be!” Lady Markland said.
And when the boy resumed his talk she listened with inattention, trying in vain to keep her interest fixed on what he was saying, making vague replies, turning over a hundred possibilities in her mind, but by some strange dullness, such as is usual enough in similar circumstances, never thinking of the real cause. What danger could there be to Markland in a drive of half a dozen miles, in the daylight; what risk in Mr. Warrender’s funeral? The sense that something which was not an ordinary visit was coming grew stronger and stronger upon her, but of the news which was about to reach her she never thought at all.
At last the door opened. She rose hastily, unable to control herself, to meet it, whatever it was. It was not a ceremonious servant announcing a visit, but Theo Warrender, pale as death itself, with a whole tragic volume in his face, but speechless, not knowing, now that he stood before her, what to say, who appeared in the doorway. He had hurried off, bringing his mother’s little brougham
