m-men, for she had grown very sly about her fellow-men, and knew
that it was best to hide happiness lest someone jealous should put out
their hand to destroy it. So she had gone down to the orchard and sat in
the crook of a tree, looking out at an opal estuary where a frail
rainstorm spun like a top in the sunshine before the variable April
gusts. She wondered how his dear brown face would look now he had
outfaced danger and had been burned by strange suns. She had heard
suddenly the sound of steps coming down the path, and she had turned in
ecstasy; but there was nobody there but a pale young man who looked like
one of the East-End trippers who all through the summer months
persistently trespassed on the farm lands. As he saw her he stopped, and
she was about to order him to leave the orchard by the nearest gate when
he flapped his very large hands and cried out, "Mummie! Mummie!" There
was a whistling quality in the cry that instantly convinced her. She
drew herself taut and prepared to deal with him as a spirited woman
deals with a blackmailer, but as he ran towards her, piping exultantly,
"Now I'm sixteen I can say who I want to live with--the vicar says so,"
she remembered that he was her son, and suffered herself to be folded in
his arms, which embraced her closely but without suggestion of strength.

That day, at least, she had played her part according to her duty: she
had corrected so far as possible the sin of her inner being. It had not
been so very difficult, for Roger had shown himself just as
goldenhearted as he had been as a child. He would not speak of the years
of ill-treatment from which he had emerged, save to say tediously, over
and over again, with a revolting, grateful whine in his voice, how hard
Aunt Susan had worked to keep the peace when father had one of his bad
turns. It appeared that for the last two years he had been an apprentice
in a draper's shop at Exeter, and though there he had been underfed and
overworked and imprisoned from the light and air, all that he complained
of was that the "talk was bad." Tears came into his light eyes when he
said that, and she perceived that there was nothing in his soul save
sickly, deserving innocence, and of course this inexterminable love for
her. There would never be any end to that. All through the midday meal
he kept on putting down his fork with lumps of meat sticking on it and
would say whistlingly: "Ooh, mummie, d'you know, I used to think it must