r
book.... Once upon a time.... No, that's silly.... It was glass ...
glass ... a glass book.... Put our names together ... print them....
No.... I want a ticket to London, please.... A ticket to London...."

* * * * *

In the meantime, Mr. Surtees and Bellamy were talking very seriously to
Lady Wychcote. Her ladyship was badly frightened. It did not take them
long to bring her to a reasonable view of the question at issue. If her
grandson should die, she could not but realise that his death would be
laid to her account by others, though her own angry thought insisted
that his mother would be really the one to blame. Then, too, she loved
the boy, as has been said, far more than she had ever loved her own
sons. She quailed inwardly with pain when she thought of the shriek of
terror with which Bobby had greeted her a little while ago when she had
entered the room with Bellamy. "Don't let her get me!... Don't let her
take away my ticket!" he had screamed. For with the strange
inconsistency of delirium he had recognised his enemy at once, though
his mother's presence had been unable to soothe him. Lady Wychcote had
been compelled to withdraw, lest the child should go into convulsions
from his frenzied fear of her.

She sat subdued though haughty while Mr. Surtees pressed home the facts
that he considered would militate against her should she persist in her
struggle for the sole guardianship of her grandson. Bellamy, in whom she
had confided when he was called to Bobby's bedside, was strongly of the
solicitor's opinion.

They both agreed in thinking that Lady Wychcote's case would be as good
as lost before being presented. Besides, after laying before her every
other circumstance in Sophy's favour. Mr. Surtees assured her that the
Judge would be certain to demand a private interview with the boy. In
that case Bobby's absolute devotion to his mother would have the
greatest weight with the Court. And--her ladyship must pardon him--but
after the events of the last two days, she could hardly expect that her
grandson would reply as ... a ... favourably when questioned about his
feeling for her.

They expatiated on the way that the boy had come to be in his present
serious condition. The proud old woman sat listening with a face as grey
as flint and as hard. But she was suffering as she had not suffered
before in all her imperious life. Bellamy wound up by saying: "I regret
having to distress y