Edwin packed up his books with trembling hands. He went very white. It seemed to him that the eyes of the whole form were on him. They were thinking, “Hallo, here’s another of them. Ingleby! Who would have thought it?” He heard the footsteps of the sergeant go echoing down the corridor as steadily and implacably as the fate that was overtaking him. He only wanted to get it over. As soon as he was out of the classroom he ran, for every moment of uncertainty was torture to him. He ran across the quad and climbed the stairs, breathless, to the low room still steeped in stale honeydew, where his life at St. Luke’s had begun and must now so abruptly end. Mr. Selby sat at his desk waiting for him. When Edwin entered the room he looked suddenly embarrassed and fingered an envelope on his desk. “Ingleby, I sent for you urgently . .” “Yes, sir.” “It probably came as a shock to you . . . or perhaps you were prepared?” “No, sir.” “Then you must pull yourself together. You can’t guess what it is?” “No, sir.” . . . But he could. It came to him suddenly, huge and annihilating, swamping in the space of a second all the uneasiness and terror that had shadowed him in the night. Those things were nothing . . . nothing. “Oh, sir . . . my mother . . .” “Yes. . . It’s your mother, Ingleby. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Very sorry. . . .” “Tell me, sir. She’s dead. Oh . . . she’s dead . . . ?” Mr. Selby unfolded the telegram although he already knew its contents. “No. It’s not so bad as that. But she’s ill . . . very ill . . .” “I knew. . . . The minute you spoke I knew, sir. . . .” “You had better catch the eight o’clock train at the Downs station. You need only take your little bag. You can get it from the matron!’ “Yes, sir. . . .” “Have you any money?” Mr. Selby almost smiled to see him so eager to go. “No, sir. . . . Only about eightpence.” “You can’t go without money, you know. Here’s a sovereign. Now, cheer up, there’s a good fellow. Cheer up!” He smiled wanly, and Edwin burst into tears. Mr. Selby laid an awkward hand on his shoulder. It was very decent of him, Edwin thought, as he stood with his fists in his eyes, one of them clutching the sovereign that Selby had given him. “Thank you, sir . . . but it’s awful, it’s awful. . . .” “Of course, of course. . . .” He shepherded Edwin out of the room. When the boy had gone, Mr. Selby, an unemotional man, tore the telegram into small pieces and placed them, with a confirmed bachelor’s tidiness, in the waste-paper basket. Then he lit a pipe of honeydew; and the blue smoke from the bowl together with the brown smoke that he expelled from his nostrils shone cheerily in the morning sun that beat through the latticed window on to a woman’s photograph standing on the desk in front of him. For a moment he gazed at the faded image. He had not thought of her for years. CHAPTER VIII HOMEWARDS