My suspicion was that perhaps something had gone slightly wrong with my mother’s affairs, and that Mr Nixon was taking the first opportunity to explain things to me.  But such a possibility did not interest me, for I could easily afford to keep my mother and a wife too.  I was still preoccupied in my engagement—­and surely there is nothing astonishing in that—­and I began to compose the words in which, immediately on the departure of Mr Nixon after supper, I would tackle my mother on the subject.

When we had reached the Stilton and celery, I intimated that I must walk down to the post-office, as I had to dispatch a letter.

‘Won’t it do tomorrow, my pet?’ asked my mother.

‘It will not,’ I said.

Imagine leaving Agnes two days without news of my safe arrival and without assurances of my love!  I had started writing the letter in the train, near Willesden, and I finished it in the drawing-room.

‘A lady in the case?’ Mr Nixon called out gaily.

‘Yes,’ I replied with firmness.

I went forth, bought a picture postcard showing St Luke’s Square, Bursley, most untruthfully picturesque, and posted the card and the letter to my darling Agnes.  I hoped that Mr Nixon would have departed ere my return; he had made no reference at all during supper to my mother’s affairs.  But he had not departed.  I found him solitary in the drawing-room, smoking a very fine cigar.

‘Where’s the mater?’ I demanded.

‘She’s just gone out of the room,’ he said.  ’Come and sit down.  Have a weed.  I want a bit of a chat with you, Philip.’

I obeyed, taking one of the very fine cigars.

‘Well, Uncle Nixon,’ I encouraged him, wishing to get the chat over because my mind was full of Agnes.  I sometimes called him uncle for fun.

‘Well, my boy,’ he began.  ’It’s no use me beating about the bush.  What do you think of me as a stepfather?’

I was struck, as they say down there, all of a heap.

‘What?’ I stammered.  ‘You don’t mean to say—­you and mother—?’

He nodded.

’Yes, I do, lad.  Yesterday she promised as she’d marry my unworthy self.  It’s been coming along for some time.  But I don’t expect she’s given you any hint in her letters.  In fact, I know she hasn’t.  It would have been rather difficult, wouldn’t it?  She couldn’t well have written, “My dear Philip, an old friend, Mr Nixon, is falling in love with me and I believe I’m falling in love with him.  One of these days he’ll be proposing to me.”  She couldn’t have written like that, could she?’

I laughed.  I could not help it.

‘Shake hands,’ I said warmly.  ‘I’m delighted.’

And soon afterwards my mother sidled in, shyly.

‘The lad’s delighted, Sarah,’ said Mr Nixon shortly.

I said nothing about my own engagement that night.  I had never thought of my mother as a woman with a future, I had never realized that she was desirable, and that a man might desire her, and that her lonely existence in that house was not all that she had the right to demand from life.  And I was ashamed of my characteristic filial selfish egoism.  So I decided that I would not intrude my joys on hers until the next morning.  We live and learn.