“Yes. . . . Of course I agreed. Your aunt is quite right. I am overtired. It was a terrible strain. And the doctor suggested that my native air. . . .” “Oh . . . I don’t mean that,” said Edwin. “I mean about St. Luke’s. . . I can’t go back now . . . of course I can’t . . .” “Don’t be ridiculous and childish, Edwin,” said Aunt Laura severely. “You don’t imagine just because”—with a hushed and melancholy inflection—“this . . . has happened, you’re never going to school again?” “No. . . . I don’t mean that. Of course I don’t. Only . . . only the term is nearly over. In another fortnight all the chaps will be going away for the hols. It isn’t worth it. I should feel . . .” “We weren’t considering your feelings so much as your good,” said Aunt Laura complacently. “Father . . . father . . . you can’t mean it. You see. . . . I don’t know . . . it would all be so strange. So awfully difficult. I should have lost touch with all the work the form was doing. I shouldn’t be able to pick it up. It’s rotten . . . rotten . . .” “Edwin, you will distress your father . . .” “Oh, Aunt Laura, do let father speak for himself.” Immense volumes of yellow smoke signalled Uncle Albert’s distress. “Father . . .” “It’s difficult, Edwin . . .” “But it isn’t difficult, father, dear. Aunt Laura doesn’t realise. She doesn’t realise what it would be like going back like that to St. Luke’s. It would only be waste of time. Father, I’d read during the hols. . . . I would, really. It isn’t that I want to get out of going back to work. It isn’t that a bit. I’d work like blazes. Only . . . only everything now seems to have gone funny and empty . . . sort of blank. I . . . I feel awful without mother . . .” “Edwin . . .” warningly, from Aunt Laura. That Aunt Laura should presume to correct him in a matter of delicacy! “Of course you don’t understand,” he said bitterly. “You don’t want me to speak about mother. You’ve had your excitement out of it. You’ve had your chance of bossing round, and now you want to arrange what I shall do for the rest of my life, I suppose. You’ve no . . . no reverence.” He was really very angry. It was always difficult for him to be anything else with Aunt Laura; for he felt that it was somehow horribly unjust for her to be alive when his mother was dead, and he could never, never forget what his darling had told him of her stupid jealousy. On this occasion Aunt Laura seemed to be less disturbed than usual by his violence. She spoke with a calculated coolness that compelled the admiration of her husband, sitting very uncomfortably on the edge of the storm, desperately anxious to show that without his taking sides his wife could rely on his support.