ise to the dear old thing. She meant to be kind, and I'm
sorry I shocked her. I'm going to ring for fresh tea, and we can have a
nice talk, and shock each other comfortably. Have _you_ any children?"

"I have a son," said Cassandra. The brilliance of her smile faded as
she spoke. She was conscious of it herself and laboriously endeavoured
to keep her voice unchanged. "He is nine years old. At a preparatory
school. Quite a big person."

Grizel also ceased to smile. There was an expression akin to reverence
in the hazel eyes as they dwelt on the other's face. The deep note was
in her voice.

"You look so young, just a girl, and you have a son nearly ten! Old
enough to be a companion,--to talk with you, and to understand. How
wonderful it must be!"

There was a moment of silence during which Cassandra's thoughts flew
back to those never-to-be-forgotten days when a tiny form lay elapsed to
a heart overflowing with the glory of motherhood, and then reproduced
before her a stocky figure in an Eton suit, with a stolid, freckled
face. She smiled with stiff lips.

"He is a dear thing, quite clever too, which is satisfactory. You must
see him in the holidays, but unless you can talk cricket I'm afraid he
may bore you. It is not, of course, a responsive age."

"It will come! It will come! It's storing up. These undemonstrative
natures are the richest deep down," Grizel said softly.

The maid came in with the tea at that moment, and she said no more, but
it was enough. Cassandra felt an amazed conviction that if she had
spoken for hours, the situation could not have been more accurately
understood.

Grizel poured out tea, talking easily the while.

"Having a son must mean educating oneself all over again. Cricket now!
It's the deadliest game. One goes to Lord's for the frocks, and to meet
friends and have tea, and see all the dear little top hats waved in the
air at the end. I dote on enthusiasm; it goes to my head like wine.
Every Eton and Harrow I wave and enthuse as wildly as if I'd ten sons on
the winning side. But how on earth they _can_ enjoy that everlasting
running about over the same few yards, between the same old posts, hour
after hour, day after day!" She shrugged expressively. "Well! I never
_look_."

"It's worse when they talk about it!" Cassandra said. "When my boy is
at home, he and his father talk cricket steadily through every meal. I
am hopelessly out in the cold. I suppo