Confessions of a Well-Meaning Woman
I would not stay the night. I explained the very delicate position in which we had left Kathleen and Captain Laughton.
“Well, go if you feel up to it,” said Brackenbury in what I thought was an off-hand manner to adopt to his sister. “Or send Will, if anybody can find what’s happened to him. So long as they’ve some one to chaperon them, they’re all right.”
I would have stayed if Will could have stayed with me. I would have gone if that had been the only means of keeping by his side. Do you know, I had the feeling that in the length and breadth of that house he was the only one who cared whether I was well or ill, whether I lived or died . . . almost. . .
“I’m not sure that I care to leave my mother while she’s like this,” said my boy rather timidly, when he was fetched in to join the council. It is unfashionable, I believe, for the modern son to shew his mother any overt tenderness. . .
“Well, some one’s got to go,” said Brackenbury with unnecessary impatience. “It’s all up, if you leave those two without any one to keep them in countenance.”
“We will both go,” I said.
When the car was ordered, we went into the hall and waited. . . After about twenty
73
