“Well, dear, I was only thinking that as you’ve been away from us for three months, and....”
“Well, dear, to go away, the very first week-end.”
“But you’ll be seeing lots of me all the week.”
“I wasn’t thinking of us, though of course we like to have you here. It was April; don’t you think it might rather hurt her feelings?”
“I know, mother, but it’s April this and April that; it’s nothing but April.”
His mother raised to him a surprised, grieved face, but she made no answer, and Roland, standing beside the table, experienced the sensation of an anxious actor who has finished his speech in the middle of the stage and does not know how to reach the wings.
“You see, mother,” he began, but she raised a hand to stop him.
He cursed himself, as he walked to the bus, for his ill-temper. What a beast he was--first to April, then to his mother; the two people for whom he cared most in the world. What was wrong? Why was he behaving like this? It had not been always so. At school he had had a reputation for good-naturedness--“a social lubricant,” someone had called him--and at Hogstead he was still the same, cheerful, good-humored, willing to do anything for anyone else. He became his old self in the company of Gerald and his father and the light-hearted, irresponsible Muriel. It was only at Hammerton that he was irritable and quick to take offense. His ill-humor fell away from him, however, the moment that he reached the office.
“Well, old son,” said Gerald, “and did you get a letter from the mater this morning?”
“Oh, but of course you are. They’ll all be fearfully annoyed if you don’t, especially Muriel----”
“Nothing particular as far as I remember, but she seemed frightfully keen. She says you’re the only one of my friends she’s any use for. She finds them too stuck up--middle-aged at twenty she calls them. So you’ll have to come.”
“Of course you will. Sit down and write a note this minute, so that there’s no chance of your thinking better.”
When Roland returned home that night his mother made no reference to the scene at the breakfast table. They spoke at dinner of indifferent things, politics and personalities; but there was a brooding atmosphere of disquiet. Not until nearly bedtime did Roland announce his intention of going down to Hogstead. His mother’s reply expressed neither reproach nor disappointment.