Huggo mimicked the voice in which the frightful ass had said this; and Rosalie, at the words and at his tone, had across her body a sudden chill, as it were physical. She wanted to say something. But it was the kind of thing you couldn’t, somehow, say to Huggo, at fifteen. But she said it. “Huggo, you do love me, don’t you?” He turned to her a face curiously thin-lipped. “Oh, I say, mother, do look out, some one might hear you!” Her Huggo! (She wants to stop the passing scenes and to stretch out to him across the years her arms.) Her Huggo! The one that first along her arm had laid; the scrap that first within her eyes adoring tears had brimmed; her baby boy, her tiny manling, her tiny hugging one, her first born! It is in retrospection that she sits and there’s expelled for ever from her face that aspect mutinous, intolerant, defiant, that used to visit there. That, when she housed it, was the aspect of the young man Ishmael whose hand was against every man. She is like Hagar now to be imagined, sitting over against these things a good way off, as it were a bowshot. Strike on! Her Huggo! Look, that’s the day they got that bad report of him from school. She had questioned Harry about a letter in his post and, naming the headmaster of Tidborough, “Yes, it’s from Hammond,” he had answered her. “About Huggo?” “Yes, it’s about Huggo.” Nothing more. They were beginning to have exchanges terse as that. She said presently, “I suppose it would interest me, wouldn’t it?” His face was very hard. “Do you want to know the answer I feel like giving to that?” “I’ve asked for it, haven’t I, Harry?” “You shall have it. The answer is that I think what the letter says implicates you.” She preserved her composure. She by now had had practice in preserving her composure. “What’s the matter, Harry?” “Hammond says--as good as says--that Huggo will have to be withdrawn from Tidborough.” She knew perfectly well that this was only leading up to something. “May I hear?” “You may.” He took up the letter and read from it. “‘Apart from that, and it would of course be the reason given--the other, I am confident, is susceptible of change--apart from that, the boy has now twice failed to keep his place in the school. If he does not get his remove in the coming term I shall be compelled to ask you to remove him.’” He put down the letter and looked at her. “That’ll be nice, won’t it?” She made an appeal. “Harry, don’t. I mean, don’t talk like that. It won’t happen.” He softened in no degree. He said sternly: “It will happen.” She persevered. “I’m quite sure it won’t. You’ve only got to talk seriously to Huggo. This coming holidays you can get him some coaching. He’s got brains.” There was a steely note in Harry’s voice: “Oh, he’s got brains. He can have coaching. It’s what he hasn’t got and what he can’t get that’s going to get Huggo withdrawn.” “What is it you mean?” “A home.” She slightly raised the fingers of her hands and dropped them. This subject!