Isn’t it peculiar!’ he thought.

“Stop shaking,, do!” said the nurse, smacking his thighs playfully; for by now his knees were pressing together and then parting, and his whole body was giving little convulsive movements forward.

Orvil tried to control the twitchings of his body, and then his teeth began to chatter. They clicked together like loose false teeth, and once he bit his tongue and gave a grunt of pain.

“What are you now? A little porker?” suggested thenurse unsympathetically. She did not know what had happened. She finished drying his legs, tied the plaited cord a little too tightly round his waist, and tucked the bedclothes round him again.

“Now you’ll feel fine,” she said; and she gave him two more of the tablets which had helped to make him so blotchy. Once more she tried to comb her fingers through his hair, but she gave it up, laughing. “It’s like a terrier dog’s coat, or the best thatch, guaranteed to keep the rain out for a hundred years” Then she added more softly, “Good night, lad,” and left him.

‘“Lad” is queer,’ Orvil thought; ‘it’s full of sex.’ And he went on thinking of words and the different feelings they gave him, until at last he fell asleep.

.   .   .

Orvil was thrilled to see his father in the big black car, waiting at the front door of the Sanatorium. The sight was so unexpected that it seemed like a direct and magic answer to his craving.

‘I did not need so large a car for my Escape,’ he thought; ‘but Magic would never niggle, never send a Baby Austin.’ lie ran out into the sun; his head began to swim and he felt a maddening tickle in one of his ears.

“Hullo, Daddy,” he cried out, holding open the door of the car for his father. Orvil only saw his father once in every three years, and Mr. Pym hardly meant more to him than black cars and exciting restaurant meals. They had very little to talk about, because the one subject of deep interest to them both was quite banned. Orvil’s mother had died three years ago; and he knew that if he even so much as mentioned her, his father’s face would freeze and harden, and his voice become abrupt and cruel and contemptuous. She was never to be thought of or considered again—because she had been loved so much. It was disgusting to show that you knew such a woman had everexisted. She was so unmentionable that it was necessary to use elaborate circumlocutions in speaking about the past.

“Hullo, Microbe,” said Mr. Pym. He had always called Orvil this, because he was his youngest and smallest child. Sometimes it was Maggot, but generally Microbe.

“Are you better?” he went on. “You look a bit patchy still.”

“Oh, I’m quite all right again. Shall we go quickly, now?” said Orvil, looking urgently at his father. He hurried away to get his bag, and did not feel safe until the village, and all the school buildings, had been left far behind.

The chauffeur’s driving was expert and smooth. For two moments Orvil was filled with joy in his freedom; then he began to worry, for already the holidays had started, and each second brought the next term nearer.

Mr. Pym suggested that they should spend the night at Oxford on their way down to the South. If they did this they would be able to find out if Charles, the eldest son, were still at his lodgings or not. Charles was of so independent a nature that he refused to tell his plans or ever to write any letters. Mr. Pym had to find out about his son as best he could.

Charles was not there. When they enquired at his lodgings, the landlady said that he had left at the end of the term with two other gentlemen. “They drove away in that snorting blue car of his,” she said contemptuously. Orvil hated his brother’s blue Bugatti almost as much as the landlady seemed to do. The leather straps across its swollen bonnet, the obscene exhaust-pipe, so like a greedy vacuum-cleaner, these parts particularly filled him with dislike.

Orvil and his father went back to the Mitre and sat in basket chairs under the glass roof. Mr. Pym ordered gin and French Vermouth for himself and оrangе juice for Orvil. He did not talk but began to look at the magazines lying on the table. A gloom spread over Orvil. His fatherlooked up, then took the cherry from his cocktail and held it out, just as he used to do when Orvil was a very small boy.