a bird that is moulting. His
father was mildly surprised, but applauded the apparent desire for
solitary study. His mother was violently surprised, and tried hard
to get at his true reasons. She saw with the piercing eye of a
relation--that eye from which hardly anything can ever be hidden--that
something had happened and that the something was sobering and
unpleasant. She could not imagine what it was, for she did not know he
had been to Creeper Cottage the night before and all the afternoon and
at dinner he had talked and behaved as usual. Now he did not talk at
all, and his behaviour was limited to a hasty packing of portmanteaus.
Determined to question him she called him into the study just before
he started, and shut the door.

"I must go mater," he said, pulling out his watch; he had carefully
avoided her since breakfast though she had laid many traps for him.

"Robin, I want to tell you that I think you splendid."

"Splendid? What on earth for? You were telling me a very different
sort of thing a day or two ago."

"I am sorry now for what I said on Sunday."

"I don't think a mother ought ever to say she's sorry," said Robin
gloomily.

"Not if she is?"

"She oughtn't to say so."

"Well dear let us be friends. Don't go away angry with me. I do
appreciate you so much for going. You are my own dear boy." And she
put her hands on his shoulders.

He took out his watch again. "I say, I must be off."

"Don't suppose a mother doesn't see and understand."

"Oh I don't suppose anything. Good-bye mater."

"I think it so splendid of you to go, to turn your back on temptation,
to unwind yourself from that wretched girl's coils."

"Coils?"

"My Robin"--she stroked his cheek, the same cheek, as it happened,
Priscilla had smitten--"my Robin must not throw himself away. I am
ambitious where you are concerned, my darling. It would have broken my
heart for you to have married a nobody--perhaps a worse than nobody."

Robin, who was staring at her with an indescribable expression on his
face, took her hands off his shoulders. "Look here mater," he
said--and he was seized by a desire to laugh terrifically--"there is
nothing in the world quite so amusing as the way people will talk
wisely of things they don't in the faintest degree understand. They
seem to feel wise in proportion to their ignorance. I expect you think
that's a funny speech for me to make. I can tell you I don't think it
half as funny as yours was. G