--"But it seemed to me the boy was all right, when he got engaged to Johnson's girl. No la-di-da notions about him then. And now he'd rather do without money, than touch mine that was made in honest trade. Suppose he thinks I cheated it out of people's pockets; sold inferior stuff, and got swollen on it. Well, it don't matter--it don't matter..." brooding on to-night's culmination of all his fears. If his wife had been alive--he could have had it all out with her, all his bitterness and disappointment; and she would have said in her sensible way: "Never mind, Ned; the boy doesn't know what he's talking about; he'll come round all right,--he's a good lad, really."... But his wife was dead. And his two daughters--he had heard them flippantly remarking to visitors that they were "bringing up dad in the way all parents should go!"--not much consolation to be had from Editha and Ivy. Ned Levi, in his loneliness, wondered if it ever struck the strange hard young people of modern times, how very little fun it was to be a parent.
Sebastian had no idea that his thrice-twisted motives could have been misconstrued by his father to aught so simple as a shrinking from wealth earned in trade. He was even unaware that he had hurt his father--thought he had merely made him angry. He determined, standing on the hotel steps, and letting great gusts of clean air lift the hair from his heated forehead, that both Letty and her father were entitled to hear without delay what he had done. Then, and then only, would he allow himself to tell Stuart--and his heart raced madly for an instant, as it struck him he might still have time to get over to the Haven this very night.
"Do you want the small car, sir?" queried the liveried porter respectfully.
"Yes--no----" Sebastian remembered that a too frequent use of his father's automobile was hardly compatible with his recent hotly spoken resolutions. He walked a few quick steps along the sea-front ... then returned, and ordered the two-seater. There would be no possibility of reaching the Haven unless he drove. And, after all, "once more doesn't count."
--"We needn't ask who _that_ is!" chirped the Cabbage-rose, when the throbbing of an engine was heard outside the Farme. "I don't suppose it's a visitor for _us_, do you, Mrs. Strachey?"