ke the best of a bad job. It's a great quality!' And he
heard her say:

"Now, darling, if I give you this, you must promise me to use it every
morning. You'll find you'll soon have a splendid crop of little young
hairs."

"I know," he said gloomily; "but they won't come to anything. Age has
got my head, Mother, just as it's got 'the Land's.'"

"Oh, nonsense! You must go on with it, that's all!"

Felix turned so that he could look at her. She was moving round the room
now, meticulously adjusting the framed photographs of her family that
were the only decoration of the walls. How formal, chiselled, and
delicate her face, yet how almost fanatically decisive! How frail and
light her figure, yet how indomitably active! And the memory assailed
him of how, four years ago, she had defeated double pneumonia without
having a doctor, simply by lying on her back. 'She leaves trouble,' he
thought, 'until it's under her nose, then simply tells it that it isn't
there. There's something very English about that.'

She was chasing a bluebottle now with a little fan made of wire, and,
coming close to Felix, said:

"Have you seen these, darling? You've only to hit the fly and it kills
him at once."

"But do you ever hit the fly?"

"Oh, yes!" And she waved the fan at the bluebottle, which avoided it
without seeming difficulty.

"I can't bear hurting them, but I DON'T like flies. There!"

The bluebottle flew out of the window behind Felix and in at the one
that was not behind him. He rose.

"You ought to rest before tea, Mother."

He felt her searching him with her eyes, as if trying desperately to
find something she might bestow upon or do for him.

"Would you like this wire--"

With a feeling that he was defrauding love, he turned and fled. She
would never rest while he was there! And yet there was that in her face
which made him feel a brute to go.

Passing out of the house, sunk in its Monday hush, no vestige of a
Bigwig left, Felix came to that new-walled mound where the old house
of the Moretons had been burned 'by soldiers from Tewkesbury and
Gloucester,' as said the old chronicles dear to the heart of Clara. And
on the wall he sat him down. Above, in the uncut grass, he could see
the burning blue of a peacock's breast, where the heraldic bird stood
digesting grain in the repose of perfect breeding, and below him
gardeners were busy with the gooseberries. 'Gardeners and the
gooseberries of the great!' he thought. '