"Is that you, Robert? What is it, dear?"
So she had not been worrying about him at all. She did not know that
it was long past their usual supper-time. She had been thinking of
something else. It made her seem a terrifyingly long way off, and he
shuffled across the room to her, and touched her to make sure of her.
And it was strange that her hand glided over him anxiously,
questioningly, as though in the darkness she too had been afraid and
uncertain.
"Your form-master, Mr. Ricardo, has been here. We've been talking
about you. Is your coat very, very torn?"
"Not--not very."
"Never mind. I'll mend it afterwards--when you've gone to bed."
Because he was so tired himself the unutterable weariness in her voice
smote him on the heart unbearably. He had never heard it before. It
made him think of her, for the first time, not just as Christine, who
looked after him and loved him, but as someone apart whom, perhaps, he
did not know at all. Hadn't they asked him, "Who is Christine?" And
he hadn't answered. He hadn't known.
"Mr. Ricardo says you will need a lot of help to pick up with the other
boys. Poor little Robert! But he takes an interest in you, and you
are to go to his house in the afternoon to be coached, and in a few
weeks you will know as much as any of them."
He did not know what "coaching" meant, but all of a sudden he had
become afraid of Mr. Ricardo. He did not want to go to him. He knew
that Mr.
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