e Janet had to sit on it like anything!
I say--shall you be coming to Brighton soon?"

Edwin shook his head.

"I never go to Brighton."

"But when I asked you once if you'd been, you said you had."

"So I have, but that was an accident."

"Was it long since?"

"Well," said Edwin, "you ought to know. It was when I brought that
parcel for you."

"Oh! Of course!"

Edwin was saying to himself: "She's sent for him on purpose. She's
heard that we're great friends, and she's sent for him! She means to
stop it! That's what it is!" He had no rational basis for this
assumption. It was instinctive. And yet why should she desire to
interfere with the course of the friendship? How could it react
unpleasantly on her? There obviously did not exist between mother and
son one of those passionate attachments which misfortune and sorrow
sometimes engender. She had been able to let him go. And as for
George, he seldom mentioned his mother. He seldom mentioned anybody who
was not actually present, or necessary to the fulfilment of the idea
that happened to be reigning in his heart. He lived a life of
absorption, hypnotised by the idea of the moment. These ideas succeeded
each other like a dynasty of kings, like a series of dynasties, marked
by frequent dynastic quarrels, by depositions and sudden deaths; but
George's loyalty was the same to all of them; it was absolute.

"Well, anyhow," said he, "I shall come back here. Mother will have to
let me."

And he jumped down from the wall into Edwin's garden, carelessly, his
hands in his pockets, with a familiar ease of gesture that implied
practice. He had in fact often done it before. But just this time--
perhaps he was troubled by the unaccustomed clothes--having lighted on
his feet, he failed to maintain his balance and staggered back against
the wall.

"Now, clumsy!" Edwin commented.

The boy turned pale, and bit his lip, and then Edwin could see the tears
in his eyes. One of his peculiarities was that he had no shame whatever
about crying. He could not, or he would not, suffer stoically. Now he
put his hands to his back, and writhed.

"Hurt yourself?" Edwin asked.

George nodded. He was very white, and startled. At first he could not
command himself sufficiently to be able to articulate. Then he
spluttered, "My back!" He subsided gradually into a sitting posture.

Edwin ran to him, and picked him up. But he screamed until he was set
down. At