Michael saw the gate so imperially slammed, he heard the despairing howl of Robin, and though he was sorry for Robin, he could not help laughing. He remembered also a ludicrous sight he had seen at the Zoological Gardens a few days ago: two seals, sitting bolt upright, quarrelling with each other, and making the most absurd grimaces and noises. They neither of them quite dared to attack the other, and so sat with their faces close together, saying the rudest things. Aunt Barbara would certainly have seen how inimitably his father and he had, in their interview just now, resembled the two seals.
And then he became aware that all the time, au fond, he had thought about nothing but Sylvia, and of Sylvia, not as the subject of quarrel, but as just Sylvia, the singing Sylvia, with a hand on his shoulder.
The winter sun was warm on the south terrace of the house, when, an hour later, he strolled out, according to arrangement, with his mother. It had melted the rime of the night before that lay now on the grass in threads of minute diamonds, though below the terrace wall, and on the sunk rims of the empty garden beds it still persisted in outline of white heraldry. A few monthly roses, weak, pink blossoms, weary with the toil of keeping hope alive till the coming of spring, hung dejected heads in the sunk garden, where the hornbeam hedge that carried its russet leaves unfallen, shaded them from the wind. Here, too, a few bulbs had pricked their way above ground, and stood with stout, erect horns daintily capped with rime. All these things, which for years had been presented to Lady Ashbridge’s notice without attracting her attention; now filled her with minute childlike pleasure; they were discoveries as entrancing and as magical as the first finding of the oval pieces of blue sky that a child sees one morning in a hedge-sparrow’s nest. Now that she was alone with her son, all her secret restlessness and anxiety had vanished, and she remarked almost with glee that her husband had telephoned from the golf links to say that he would not be back for lunch; then, remembering that Michael had gone to talk to his father after breakfast, she asked him about the interview.
Michael had already made up his mind as to what to say here. Knowing that his father was anxious about her, he felt it highly unlikely that he would tell her anything to distress her, and so he represented the interview as having gone off in perfect amity. Later in the day, on his father’s return, he had made up his mind to propose a truce between them, as far as his mother was concerned. Whether that would be accepted or not he could not certainly tell, but in the interval there was nothing to be gained by grieving her.