If it had arrived earlier Laura might have heard less about it; but the gate at the end of the drive had barely closed on the postman before it had opened again to her, and Mrs. Cloud, full of her good tidings, had yielded to old custom and the comfort of a listener. So Laura, though she was not allowed to read the letter herself—such privileges were hers no longer—yet heard its every word read aloud by a voice that, strengthened by excitement, was more than ever the softened, haunting shadow of Justin’s. Such a delightful letter as it was too—such a hasty, pencilled letter that yet found time to be full of problematical orderly detail of his itinerary, to be margined with instructions as to what his mother was and was not to do in the matter of coming to town and meeting trains—a letter that had been so obviously written, not by Captain Cloud of the Kentshires, but by H. J. Cloud of the Lower Fifth, arriving for his half-term holiday and leaving no item of the program to chance. Justin could write a good letter, couldn’t he, Laura? Laura, always quiet and now quieter than ever, with controlled hands and two bright spots of colour in her tired face, made the little necessary ejaculations, steering so delicately between indifference and absorption, that Mrs. Cloud enjoyed her responses as she enjoyed music, as a soothing accompaniment to her own thoughts. So impersonal, indeed, could Laura be, that it was not until she was left alone again that Mrs. Cloud realized that she had broken through her rule of avoiding the subject of Justin—the rule that she had devised, half to spare and half to punish a criminal Laura. She shrugged her shoulders. She could not be deeply disturbed. Her anger, for she had had her guess-work anger on behalf of an injured but uncommunicative son, had long ago died down. It smouldered, of course, flickering up occasionally into perplexed resentment: would never, I think—though Justin and Laura should miraculously adjust their differences—be completely extinguished; for it was not in Mrs. Cloud’s nature, so sweetly oblivious of sins against herself, ever to forgive a harshness or forget a kindness rendered to those she loved; but the hot ashes of it were hidden deep in her heart—she had found herself able, in time, to be reconciled, to pretend justice to Laura. She said to herself very often that she did not want to be unkind.... Justin, she admitted, was not an ordinary boy.... He had needed understanding—and Laura was very young.... If only they had either of them seen fit to confide the cause of their quarrel to her, she was sure that she could have helped them over it.... Justin was so much her own son that his reserve could not hurt her, but she thought Laura should have come to her.... She thought Laura owed her that....