She read this to Dennis as they sat together that night for a bed-time talk after old Lady Yardley’s whist was finished, and Aunt Hester had hurried away in horror of the lateness of the hour and the fear of missing her beauty sleep. One piece of the letter was not for his ears: Colin asked if she was making up lost ground with Dennis, and supposed they had hatched plenty of conspiracies against him: he also sent a message to Dennis to say that he need not trouble to ink his fingers over writing to him, as his letters were quite illegible. Violet thought it unnecessary to deliver that message, but, reading out the postponement of his father’s return, she saw Dennis’s face fall. “Then I shan’t see Father before I go back to Eton,” he observed. Violet considered the dates. “No, dear, you’ll have gone back several days before he comes,” she said. The cloud deepened on Dennis’s face. “Did Father say anything about the letters I’ve written him?” he asked. She laughed. “Yes, dear, he did say something,” she said, “about their not being particularly easy to read.” “No other message for me?” asked the boy. Violet’s heart began to ache for him. “Let’s see: where have I got to?” she said. “Wonderful vintage, he says, in the lovely hot weather they’re having.... He’s been bathing all the morning, and has had lunch, and is going to sleep....” “But no message for me?” persisted Dennis. Violet finished the letter and tore it up. There was a good deal about Dennis, though nothing for him. But it struck her that these uncomplimentary comments were forced. In one Colin had first written ‘the boy,’ but had crossed that out and substituted ‘the brat.’ He had not thought of him as ‘the brat’ originally: ‘the brat’ was the image under which he schooled himself to think of him. The sentences had no spontaneous ring about them; they expressed what he tried to feel. She felt sure that her interpretation was no fanciful one. Dennis had accepted her silence to his repeated question. “And what else has he been doing?” he said. “Dining out in the garden every night,” said Violet, “and looking at them making the wine. The garden is a good deal burned up with the heat. Nothing else. The bathing takes half the day.” Dennis crossed from the far side of the hearth-rug and made a back for himself against her knees. “It sounds awfully ripping and lazy,” he said. “Father loves it, doesn’t he? I should have liked to have gone with him for a bit.”