THE MODERN WARNING
I
When he reached the hotel Macarthy Grice was apprised, to his great disappointment, of the fact that his mother and sister were absent for the day, and he reproached himself with not having been more definite in announcing his arrival to them in advance. It was a little his nature to expect people to know things about himself that he had not told them and to be vexed when he found they were ignorant of them. I will not go so far as to say that he was inordinately conceited, but he had a general sense that he himself knew most things without having them pumped into him. He had been uncertain about his arrival and, since he disembarked at Liverpool, had communicated his movements to the two ladies who after spending the winter in Rome were awaiting him at Cadenabbia only by notes as brief as telegrams and on several occasions by telegrams simply. It struck his mother that he spent a great deal of money on these latter missives—which were mainly negative, mainly to say that he could not yet say when he should be able to start for the Continent. He had had business in London and
