my mater to see an awfully
decent chap called Lord Saxby and my name's Saxby. Do you think he's a
relation? I asked the mater, but she said something about not asking
silly questions."

"Humph!" said Mrs, Carthew, as she adjusted her spectacles to examine an
espalier of favourite peaches. "I think you'll have to be very good to
your mother," she continued after a minute's silence.

"Oh, rather," assented Michael vaguely.

"You must always remember that you have a particular responsibility, as
you will be alone with her for a long time, and, no doubt, she has given
up a great deal of what she most enjoys in order to stay with you. So
don't think only of yourself."

"Oh, rather not," said Michael.

In his heart he felt while Mrs. Carthew was speaking a sense of remote
anxiety. He could not understand why, as soon as he asked any direct
questions, mystery enveloped his world. He had grown used to this in
Miss Carthew's case, but Mrs. Carthew was just as unapproachable. He
began to wonder if there really were some mystery about himself. He knew
the habit among grown-up people of wrapping everything in a veil of
uncertainty, but in his case it was so universally adopted that he began
to be suspicious and determined to question his mother relentlessly, to
lay conversational traps for her and thereby gain bit by bit the details
of his situation. He was older now and had already heard such rumours of
the real life of the world that a chimera of unpleasant possibilities
was rapidly forming. Left alone, he began to speculate perpetually about
himself, to brood over anxious guesses. Perhaps his father was in
prison and not dead at all. Perhaps his father was in a lunatic asylum.
Perhaps he himself had been a foundling laid on the doorstep long ago,
belonging neither to his mother nor to anyone else. He racked his brain
for light from the past to be shed upon his present perplexity, but he
could recall no flaw in the care with which his ignorance had been
cherished.

When Michael reached Carlington Road on a fine September afternoon and
saw the window-boxes of crimson and white petunias and the sunlight
streaming down upon the red-brick houses, he was glad to be home again
in familiar Sixty-four. Inside it had all been re-papered and
re-painted. Every room was much more beautiful and his mother was glad
to see him. She took him round all the new rooms and hugged him close
and was her slim and lovely self again. Actually, am