Comethup entered into a long recital of his doings, sharply questioned at intervals by Miss Carlaw as to the number of runs he had made here and the number of wickets he had taken there; she appeared to know all the technicalities of everything that had concerned him by heart. The recital lasted well into the middle of lunch, and she heard it through to the bitter end with complete and smiling satisfaction. Then, after sitting silent for some minutes, she turned abruptly to him, and felt for his hand upon the table and covered it with her own.
"Now, my dear boy," she said, "you've been away from me, for the most part, for eight years. I am a lonely old woman and one who has but one love in her life, and that's you. I've missed you and longed for you dreadfully; but I knew it was all for the best, and you were growing to be a brave and clever lad, and so I put up with it. Now, it's no good blinking facts; I'm getting old, and, at the best, I haven't got so many years of life before me. I've thought of all sorts of things for you--professions into which I might put you; I've thought of sending you to one of the universities. But these years have taught me a lesson. I can't spare you. After all, there are plenty of poor devils in this world who have got to earn their living, and I don't see why you, who have plenty, should stand in the way of any one of them. I know you'd beat 'em hollow, whatever you took up, if you once started; but I'm not going to let you try. As I've said, I'm a lonely old woman, and I'm devilish tired of my own company. If you can put up with me, and are not ashamed of me--no, no, boy, I ought not to have said that; forgive me--I think we might manage, for a year or two, to run about the world together and have a good time. I've never travelled yet, for travel simply means inconvenience; but you shall be my eyes, and we'll educate you in our own fashion. You shall see all that this good old earth has to show you, and you shall tell me all about it and give me your own impressions; and I shall be happy, and we'll both be happy. I don't want to make a vagabond of you; but there's a good idleness as well as a bad idleness, and we'll see if we can't find the first. What do you think of it?"