"If he were my own
child he could not be dearer to me. I remember my stepmother once
told me so. 'My boy has two mothers, Dinah,' these were her very
words. Well, he is my Son of Consolation," and Dinah heaved a gentle
sigh, as though the motherhood within her, the divine maternal
instinct inherent in all true women, felt itself satisfied.
At breakfast the next morning Malcolm proffered his services; but
Elizabeth assured him that Cedric and Johnson would do all that was
required, so he spent his morning indolently down by the Pool--
reading and indulging in his favourite daydreams--until Cedric
joined him.
Cedric looked heated and tired.
"I never saw such a person as Betty for getting work out of a
fellow," he grumbled. "She would do splendidly on a rice plantation-
-wouldn't the niggers fly just! Why, she set me rolling the tennis
lawn, because she wanted Johnson; and then I had to bicycle over to
Rotherwood for something that had been forgotten. I took it out in
cool drinks though, I can tell you. My word, Bet does know how to
make prime claret cup"--and Cedric smacked his lips with the air of
a veteran gourmand; and then he sparred at Malcolm, and called him
an absent-minded beggar, and asked if he had finished his ode to the
naiad of the Pool, and made sundry other aggravating remarks, which
proved that he was in excellent spirits and only wanted to find a
safety-valve.
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