How terrible the time that followed! None of the Cole children could remember anything at all like it. Even Helen, who was nearly grown up now because she was at the Polchester High School and had won last term a prize for callisthenics, was impressed with the tragedy of it all. How awful that Christmas Day, never by any of them to be forgotten for the rest of their lives!

Jeremy came downstairs and there was a pretence of gaiety. Presents were distributed on Christmas evening. Turkey and plum pudding were eaten. A heavy cloud enveloped everyone.

The fanatic that then was in Mr. Cole began now to flower. For the first time his son appeared to him as a conscience-developing individual; for the first time he really loved him; and for the first time he felt that there was a soul to be saved and that he must save it. For the first time also in their married lives a serious difference of opinion divided the father and mother. Mrs. Cole yearned over her boy who was now in some strange way escaping her. She was no psychologist, and indeed thirty years ago parents never conceived of analysing their children. She was only discovering, what every mother discovers, that a year’s absence had taken her boy away from her, had given him interests that she could not share, taught him ambitions, confided to him secrets, delivered him over to hero-worshippings that would never be hers. Not for ten years would he return to her. To be a mother you must have infinite patience.

Secretly she rebelled against her husband’s policy; outwardly she submitted to it.

During all the week following Christmas the Coles were a miserable family, and in the middle of them Jeremy moved, a figure of stone. They wished him to be an outcast; very well then, he would be an outcast. They thought him a criminal and not fit for their society; very well then, he would be apart and of himself. The presents were there, at the bottom of his play-box. His only definite punishment was that he should receive no pocket-money throughout the holidays—but he was a pariah—and a pariah he would be.

Once his mother talked to him, drawing him to her, putting her arms around him.

“Jeremy, dear, just go to father and say you’re sorry and then it will all be over.”

“I’m not sorry.”

“Well, if you’re not sorry about spending the money, because you didn’t know that you oughtn’t to, say you’re sorry because you kicked father.”

“I’m not sorry I kicked father.”

“But father loves you. He was only doing what he thought was right.”

“Father doesn’t love me or he would have known I didn’t steal the money.”

“But, Jeremy dear, father wants you to realize that you mustn’t spend other people’s money as though it were your own. You’re too young to understand now——”

“I’m not too young to understand.”

Mrs. Cole sighed. This Jeremy was utterly strange to her, so old, so oddly different from the boy of a year ago, so hard and so hostile. She was very unhappy. And Jeremy, too, was unhappy—desperately unhappy. It was no fun being a rebel. Sometimes he was on the very edge of surrender, longing to go and submit to his father, fling his arms round his mother, listen to Mary’s silly stories, play and shout and sing and laugh as he used to do.

Something kept him back. It was as though he were in a nightmare, one of those nightmares when you can’t speak, a weight is on your chest, you move against your will.

He was so unhappy that he told Hamlet that he was going to run away to sea. He had serious thoughts of this.

Then suddenly Uncle Samuel returned from Paris.