'I knew it was the crutches she missed,' I said to myself as I sat
down by my mother's side; 'she'll have to love me now because I am
_not_ lame.'
I also knew something else: I must prepare for a conflict with my
mother. My father, at this time in Switzerland, had written to say
that he had been suffering acutely from an attack of what he called
'spasms.' He had 'been much subject to them of late, but no one
considered them to be really dangerous.'
During luncheon I felt that my mother's eyes were on me. After it was
over she went to her room to write in answer to my father's letter,
and then later on she returned to me.
'Henry,' she said, 'my overhearing the dialogue in the churchyard
between you and Wynne's daughter was, I need not pay, quite
accidental, but it is perhaps fortunate that I did overhear it.'
'Why fortunate, mother? You simply heard her say that her aunt in
Wales had forbidden her to answer a childish letter of mine written
years ago.'
'In telling you which, the girl, I must say, proclaimed her aunt to
be an exceedingly sensible and well-conducted woman,' said my mother.
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