Paying Guests Read Online Free

foolish.
    ‘It is for his own good,’ they had assured her earnestly. ‘He is a clever boy, a most intelligent lad. If he remains here with you, even if he does go to a day school, he will lack the benefits that attendance at such a school as Sherborne must give him! He is a boy without a father, dear Mrs Quentin! He needs the company of men and boys, you must see that. If it were not so he would not be so tearful now, and he eleven years of age! He is too old to be so attached to his dear Mamma – you must let him go if you want a man made of him.’
    Since they had had the teaching of him since his infancy and had indeed made a splendid job of it, imbuing him with the rudiments of Latin and Greek as well as a good understanding of the use of the globes and natural philosophy and some theology, she had deferred to their opinion.
    But it had hurt. Every holiday had been a mixture of delight and misery; starting with the huge excitement of his return home at the end of the term and culminating, as always, with the dreadful pain of parting. But the school had been the making of him, she had to admit. Each year that passed had seen him taller, more muscled – for he played many games and played them well at Sherborne – and more clever. He would talk to her sometimes on long winter holiday evenings and amaze her with the breadth of his new knowledge of such matters as chemistry and physics and mathematics. He enjoyed history and geography too; altogether, she took a pride in him that almost made her burst. She had looked towards with such eagerness the end of his schooldays.
    And now it had come. Nearly eighteen, he had completed his studies at Sherborne and was home for good. She had been in anecstasy of excitement when he had arrived yesterday in a flurry of trunks and boxes fetched from the station in two cabs, since one was not large enough for it all; and he had refused to let her meet him there, telling her in an earnest letter that, at his age, it would be demeaning to be greeted like a boy of the first or second years when he was a swell of the Sixth.
    But then as the afternoon had worn on, and she had stopped gasping at the way he had grown in this past term (he was fully four inches taller than when he had left Brompton after the Easter holidays, and much more solid) and at the fact that he now clearly shaved (she had suffered a pang too as she remembered the downiness of his infant cheeks but had managed not to speak of it to him), the feelings had changed. He had been uneasy, remote, not like himself at all as he had gazed round at the little changes she had rushed to show him in the house: the new seat covers in the dining room which the guests so much preferred and the extra chairs in the drawing room that made it possible for so many more of them to spend time there in the evenings if they wanted to. He had been quiet, not at all as interested and excited as once he would have been; she saw him off to bed early, as he had insisted he wanted only a sandwich on a tray for dinner, with her feelings in a turmoil. She had slept little, still worrying over the change in him and her concern had stretched itself into this morning.
    But now, she told herself, it was all a hum. She had been a foolish, over-excited woman, allowing her anticipation of her only son’s return home for good to overshadow her normal good sense. She must give the boy time to catch his breath and be comfortable again and then all would be well. She was sure of it.
    At Mr Spurgeon’s shop she spent a half hour in close colloquy on the subject of the proper hanging of beef and the chining of mutton chops. Mr Spurgeon was an excellent butcher, or always had been, but now as he grew older and his son Walter took a more active part in the working of the business, standards seemed to have slipped a little. Last night’s steaks had been less than perfect, she told Mr Spurgeon severely, and he was mortified and talked to her for some time of the