After all, she owed him nothing; it was the other way round; she had lost by him and his.

“What you say?” she cried, almost angrily. “What you say? I don’t understand you!”

“I have got £352 left, Aunt Hilda,” he said, still refusing to meet her eyes and looking straight into the fire.

“Well?” said she.

“It’s enough to turn round on,” he continued.

“Good heavens, boy! Do you understand that you’re not yet nineteen. D’you think you are of age? What can one do with three … really, I don’t understand what you mean!”

But in that young mind a very firm determination was growing up. He knew nothing whatever of the world. But he was prepared to learn it, and to learn it alone, as soon as might be. He said no more. She questioned; she spoke so strongly that with a woman less careful of herself there would have been a storm. But she got no more out of him.

There followed two days in which neither said much. Hilda Maple did not reproach herself, but she was a little anxious. She thought herself capable of any situation: but this was new. On the third day John told her of his determination.

He was going to London. He would give her his address the moment he had one; he begged her to let him be. He was sure of himself.

There passed rapidly through his aunt’s mind the alternatives before her, and before him. She saw them clearly, as was her talent, and she made the decision, which was perhaps the only one she could have made.

He might go. She would not oppose his going. She was still determined to do her duty in so far as he would meet her—she had a strong sense of that—there was nothing petulant about the woman, nor any danger of sudden moods; she had the virtues of the worldly, and their kind of strength. It was a simple issue—either to use the law—which would be odious, and would mean a permanent breach in little more than two years’ time (for she rightly guessed the obstinacy of that deep-voiced, clear-cut, sturdy figure) or simply to let him run the length of his tether. She prophesied no disaster; she had the judgment to think that upon the whole there would be none; though there was a hidden sneer in her mind as she thought of what occupations this pig-headedness might drive him to. She told him there would always be a home there when he needed it; at heart she felt relieved of a burden.

John, on his side, felt a weight lifted too. And young as he was, he moderated.

“I certainly don’t want to quarrel, Aunt Hilda,” he said. “And I cannot help telling you that I am grateful to you. You see, when I have made up my mind—he talked like one ten years older, and anyone with a better sense of humour than Hilda Maple could hardly have helped smiling—“when I have made up my mind—I can’t even think of myself as changing.”

So it was settled. They agreed for a fortnight’s interval in which he should meet his father’s friends of the neighbourhood, and take some advice as to where he might get rooms in town—as to what he should look for then.

John Maple saw and heard and learnt much in that fortnight; and all he saw and learnt and heard further hardened him in his anger and his resolve.

For one thing, he discovered the odious word Catchings. It seems that Rackham had been re-baptised “Rackham Catchings.” Disgusting black-letter buffoonery!

He had first come across it in the village shop, where the young man with whom he had played as a boy was all obsequiousness to the heir of such wealth, and had said, bowing and smirking, over a parcel, “Shall I send it up to the Catchings?”

“To what?” John had said sharply.

“To the Catchings, sir—Rackham Catchings? Your house, sir; leastways, Mrs. Maple’s house.”

“Oh,” John had answered. “Yes, Rackham, of course. Where else should you send it?” And he had turned abruptly out of the familiar door.

After that he noticed the odious thing in the address of letters arriving. On the first day he had occasion to write a note he found it on the paper heading. He saw in the County News that some show or other was to be opened a fortnight hence by Mrs. Maple of Rackham Catchings.