id="id00184">"Don't go, John. We want you. Here's Robert telling me not to be a mother to Anne."

"And here's Adeline worrying because she thinks Anne isn't going to love her."

Severn sat down, considering it.

"It takes time," he said.

She looked at him, smiling under lowered brows.

"Time to love me?"

"Time for Anne to love you. She—she's so desperately faithful."

The dressing-bell clanged from the belfry. Robert left them to finish a discussion that he found embarrassing.

"I said I'd try to be a mother to her. I have tried, John; but the little thing won't let me."

"Don't try too hard. Robert's right. Don't—don't be a mother to her."

"What am I to be?"

"Oh, anything you like. A presence. A heavenly apparition. An impossible ideal. Anything but that."

"Do you think she's going to hold out for ever?"

"Only against that. As long as she remembers. It puts her off."

"She doesn't object to Robert being a father to her."

"No. Because he's a better father than I am; and she knows it."

Adeline flushed. She understood the implication and was hurt, unreasonably. He saw her unreasonableness and her pain.

"My dear Adeline, Anne's mother will always be Anne's mother. I was never anywhere beside Alice. I've had to choose between the Government of India and my daughter. You'll observe that I don't try to be a father to Anne; and that, in consequence, Anne likes me. But she'll love Robert."

"And 'like' me? If I don't try."

"Give her time. Give her time."

He rose, smiling down at her.

"You think I'm unreasonable?"

"The least bit in the world. For the moment."

"My dear John, if I didn't love your little girl I wouldn't care."

"Love her. Love her. She'll love you too, in her rum way. She's fighting you now. She wouldn't fight if she didn't feel she was beaten. Nobody could hold out against you long."

She looked at the clock.

"Heavens! I must go and dress."

She thought: "He didn't hold out against me, poor dear, five minutes.
I suppose he'll always remember that I jilted him for Robert."

And now he wanted her to see that if Anne's mother would be always Anne's mother, his wife would be always his wife. Was he desperately faithful, too? Always?

How could he have been? It was characteristic of Alice Severn that when she had to choose between her husband and her daughter she had chosen Anne. It was characteristic of John that when he had to choose between his wife and his Government, he had not chosen Alice. He must have had adventures out in India, conducted with the discretion becoming in a Commissioner and a Member of the Legislative Council, but adventures. Perhaps he was going back to one of them.

Severn dressed hastily and went into the schoolroom where Anne sat reading in her solitary hour between supper time and bed-time. He took her on his knee, and she snuggled there, rubbing her head against his shoulder. He thought of Adeline, teasing, teasing for the child's caresses, and every time repulsed.

"Anne," he said, "don't you think you can love Auntie Adeline?"

Anne straightened herself. She looked at him with candid eyes. "I don't know, Daddy, really, if I can."

"Can't you love her a little?"

"I—I would, if she wouldn't try—"

"Try?"

"To do like Mummy did."

Robert was right. He knew it, but he wanted to be sure.

Anne went on. "It's no use, you see, her trying. It only makes me think of Mummy more."

"Don't you want to think of her?"

"Yes. But I want to think by myself, and Auntie Adeline keeps on getting in the way."

"Still, she's awfully kind to you, isn't she?"

"Awfully."

"And you mustn't hurt her feelings."

"Have I? I didn't mean to."

"You wouldn't if you loved her."

"You haven't ever hurt her feelings, have you, Daddy?"

"No."

"Well, you see, it's because I keep on thinking about Mummy. I want her back—I want her so awfully."

"I know, Anne, I know."

Anne's mind burrowed under, turning on its tracks, coming out suddenly.

"Do you love Auntie Adeline, Daddy?"

It was terrible, but he owned that he had brought it on himself.

"I can't say. I've known her such a long time; before you were born."

"Before you married Mummy!"

"Yes."

"Well, won't it do if I love Uncle Robert and Eliot and Colin? And
Jerrold?"

That night he said to Adeline, "I know who'll take my place when I'm gone."

"Who? Robert?"

"No, Jerrold."

In another week he had sailed for India and Ambala.

* * * * *

viii

Jerrold was brave.

When Colin upset the schoolroom lamp Jerrold wrapped it in the tablecloth and threw it out of the window just in time. He put the chain on Billy, the sheep-dog, when he went mad and snapped at everybody. It seemed odd that Jerrold should be frightened.

A minute ago he had been happy, rolling over and over on the grass, shouting with laughter while Sandy, the Aberdeen, jumped on him, growling his merry puppy's growl and biting the balled fists that pushed him off.

They were all out on the lawn. Anne waited for Jerry to get up and take her into Wyck, to buy chocolates.

Every time Jerrold laughed his mother laughed too, a throaty, girlish giggle.

"I love Jerry's laugh," she said. "It's the nicest noise he makes."

Then, suddenly, she stopped it. She stopped it with a word.

"If you're going into Wyck, Jerry, you might tell Yearp——"

Yearp.

He got up. His face was very red. He looked mournful and frightened too.
Yes, frightened.

"I—can't, Mother."

"You can perfectly well. Tell Yearp to come and look at Pussy's ears, I think she's got canker."

"She hasn't," said Jerry defiantly.

"She jolly well has," said Eliot.

"Rot."

"You only say that because you don't like to think she's got it."

"Eliot can go himself. He's fond of Yearp."

"You'll do as you're told, Jerry. It's downright cowardice."

"It isn't cowardice, is it, Daddy?"

"Well," said his father, "it isn't exactly courage."

"Whatever it is," his mother said, "you'll have to get over it. You go on as if nobody cared about poor Binky but yourself."

Binky was Jerry's dog. He had run into a motor-bicycle in the Easter holidays and hurt his back, so that Yearp, the vet, had had to come and give him chloroform. That was why Jerrold was afraid of Yearp. When he saw him he saw Binky with his nose in the cup of chloroform; he heard him snorting out his last breath. And he couldn't bear it.

"I could send one of the men," his father was