"Why was I such an idiot as to enter for the two events? The chances are that I'll scratch when I get on the ground and come straight back to you."
"You must do nothing of the sort, my dear," she said. "Play all your games; it will make a good impression upon the people."
"My aim in life is to impress Framsby," said he. "It strikes me that the only impression my play will produce upon the privileged beholders will be that whatever I may be in other respects I'm a thundering duffer at tennis."
"You can't tell what their form maybe. You may have to play a second or third class man who is worse even than you," said his mother, in the tone of the invalid who has been told by her doctor to be cheerful.
He laughed. "Bless you, my dear mother, for your kind intentions; but I feel that you are a sad flatterer," he said, going off, having lighted his pipe.
She watched him as the mother of an only son watches him; and when he had disappeared and she heard him start the engine of his motor, she laid down her magazine and sighed. She knew very well why she did so. She knew how large her hopes had been that his entering into possession of his property would mean a settling down for him. In the days of their poverty--comparative poverty--the settling up every now and again was what she had good reason to dread, and now that they were wealthy--comparatively wealthy--the settling down occupied her thoughts quite as painfully.
She had seen, with a sinking of the heart, that he was beginning to lose a sense of the novelty of his position. He had become weary of it already. He had not fallen properly into the place which his grandfather had occupied; his grandfather had thought it the highest place to which a human being could aspire--the position of an English country gentleman. Jack Wingfield was beginning to be bored by it already, she could see. It was a life of pottering, she knew, and pottering, as a profession, must either be begun very early or very late in life if one is to attain to eminence in its practice. Jack had set about it too late for a young man and too early for an old one. He had had nearly six years of wandering--a little in Africa and a great deal in South America. They had been busy years, and certainly they had been restless years; but they had been years of life, not of vegetating. The rolling stone does not become associated with even so humble a form of vegetation as moss; but when it has done its rolling and finds itself in a position for such an accumulation, it is rather a pitiable object.