Pemberton tried to imagine the Moreens at
Oxford and fortunately failed; yet unless they were to adopt it as a
residence there would be no modus vivendi for Morgan. How could he live
without an allowance, and where was the allowance to come from? He,
Pemberton, might live on Morgan; but how could Morgan live on _him_? What
was to become of him anyhow? Somehow the fact that he was a big boy now,
with better prospects of health, made the question of his future more
difficult. So long as he was markedly frail the great consideration he
inspired seemed enough of an answer to it. But at the bottom of
Pemberton's heart was the recognition of his probably being strong enough
to live and not yet strong enough to struggle or to thrive. Morgan
himself at any rate was in the first flush of the rosiest consciousness
of adolescence, so that the beating of the tempest seemed to him after
all but the voice of life and the challenge of fate. He had on his
shabby little overcoat, with the collar up, but was enjoying his walk.

It was interrupted at last by the appearance of his mother at the end of
the sala. She beckoned him to come to her, and while Pemberton saw him,
complaisant, pass down the long vista and over the damp false marble, he
wondered what was in the air. Mrs. Moreen said a word to the boy and
made him go into the room she had quitted. Then, having closed the door
after him, she directed her steps swiftly to Pemberton. There was
something in the air, but his wildest flight of fancy wouldn't have
suggested what it proved to be. She signified that she had made a
pretext to get Morgan out of the way, and then she enquired--without
hesitation--if the young man could favour her with the loan of three
louis. While, before bursting into a laugh, he stared at her with
surprise, she declared that she was awfully pressed for the money; she
was desperate for it--it would save her life.

"Dear lady, c'est trop fort!" Pemberton laughed in the manner and with
the borrowed grace of idiom that marked the best colloquial, the best
anecdotic, moments of his friends themselves. "Where in the world do you
suppose I should get three louis, du train dont vous allez?"

"I thought you worked--wrote things. Don't they pay you?"

"Not a penny."

"Are you such a fool as to work for nothing?"

"You ought surely to know that."

Mrs. Moreen stared, then she coloured a little. Pemberton saw she had
quite forgotten the terms--