“Oh, it’s you, Wolf!” exclaimed his mother, without rising from her antimacassared chair, where, with a volume of The Trumpet-Major open on her tea-tray, she was sipping her tea. “How grave you look, my son!”

She gave him a glowing smile as he sat down opposite her. But he plunged at once into the dangerous waters.

“Are you really thinking of borrowing money from that brute, Mother? You know it’s been worrying me a lot.”

She regarded him with eyes that gleamed with mischief.

“Why not?” she said. “I think the good man has grown quite attached to me. I think he likes elderly ladies!”