Cyril, she thought, had realized the importance in her eyes of tea, of that evening hour and that companionship which were for her the flowering of the day. And she had such confidence in his goodness that she would pour the boiling water on the Horniman tea-leaves even before he arrived: certainty could not be more sure. And then, on the Friday of the first week, he was late! He bounded in, after dark, and the state of his clothes indicated too clearly that he had been playing football in the mud that was a grassy field in summer. "Have you been kept in, my boy?" she asked, for the sake of form. "No, mother," he said casually. "We were just kicking the ball about a bit. Am I late?" "Better go and tidy yourself," she said, not replying to his question. "You can't sit down in that state. And I'll have some fresh tea made. This is spoilt." "Oh, very well!" Her sacred tea--the institution which she wanted to hallow by long habit, and which was to count before everything with both of them--had been carelessly sacrificed to the kicking of a football in mud! And his father buried not ten days! She was wounded: a deep, clean, dangerous wound that would not bleed. She tried to be glad that he had not lied; he might easily have lied, saying that he had been detained for a fault and could not help being late. No! He was not given to lying; he would lie, like any human being, when a great occasion demanded such prudence, but he was not a liar; he might fairly be called a truthful boy. She tried to be glad, and did not succeed. She would have preferred him to have lied. Amy, grumbling, had to boil more water. When he returned to the parlour, superficially cleaned, Constance expected him to apologize in his roundabout boyish way; at any rate to woo and wheedle her, to show by some gesture that he was conscious of having put an affront on her. But his attitude was quite otherwise. His attitude was rather brusque and overbearing and noisy. He ate a very considerable amount of jam, far too quickly, and then asked for more, in a tone of a monarch who calls for his own. And ere tea was finished he said boldly, apropos of nothing: "I say, mother, you'll just have to let me go to the School of Art after Easter." And stared at her with a fixed challenge in his eyes.