success; the secretaryship and the distant shark-girt island faded 
away into the horizon of impossible things.  Francesca, forgetting 
the golden rule of strategy which enjoins a careful choosing of 
ground and opportunity before entering on hostilities, made 
straight for the bathroom door, behind which a lively din of 
splashing betokened that Comus had at least begun his toilet.

"You wicked boy, what have you done?" she cried, reproachfully.

"Me washee," came a cheerful shout; "me washee from the neck all 
the way down to the merrythought, and now washee down from the 
merrythought to - "

"You have ruined your future.  THE TIMES has printed that miserable 
letter with your signature."

A loud squeal of joy came from the bath.  "Oh, Mummy!  Let me see!"

There were sounds as of a sprawling dripping body clambering 
hastily out of the bath.  Francesca fled.  One cannot effectively 
scold a moist nineteen-year old boy clad only in a bath-towel and a 
cloud of steam.

Another messenger arrived before Francesca's breakfast was over.  
This one brought a letter from Sir Julian Jull, excusing himself 
from fulfilment of the luncheon engagement.

CHAPTER IV

FRANCESCA prided herself on being able to see things from other 
people's points of view, which meant, as it usually does, that she 
could see her own point of view from various aspects.  As regards 
Comus, whose doings and non-doings bulked largely in her thoughts 
at the present moment, she had mapped out in her mind so clearly 
what his outlook in life ought to be, that she was peculiarly 
unfitted to understand the drift of his feelings or the impulses 
that governed them.  Fate had endowed her with a son; in limiting 
the endowment to a solitary offspring Fate had certainly shown a 
moderation which Francesca was perfectly willing to acknowledge and 
be thankful for; but then, as she pointed out to a certain 
complacent friend of hers who cheerfully sustained an endowment of 
half-a-dozen male offsprings and a girl or two, her one child was 
Comus.  Moderation in numbers was more than counterbalanced in his 
case by extravagance in characteristics.

Francesca mentally compared her son with hundreds of other young 
men whom she saw around her, steadily, and no doubt happily, 
engaged in the process of transforming themselves from nice boys 
into useful citizens.  Most of them had occupations, or were 
industriously engaged in qualifying for such; in their leisure 
moments they smoked reasonably-priced cigarettes, went to the 
cheaper seats at music-halls, watched an occasional cricket match 
at Lord's with apparent interest, saw most of the world's 
spectacular events through the medium of the cinematograph, and 
were wont to exchange at parting seemingly superfluous injunctions 
to "be good."  The whole of Bond Street and many of the tributary 
thoroughfares of Piccadilly might have been swept off the face of 
modern London without in any way interfering with the supply of 
their daily wants.  They were doubtless dull as acquaintances, but 
as sons they would have been eminently restful.  With a growing 
sense of irritation Francesca compared these deserving young men 
with her own intractable offspring, and wondered why Fate should 
have singled her out to be the parent of such a vexatious variant 
from a comfortable and desirable type.  As far as remunerative 
achievement was concerned, Comus copied the insouciance of the 
field lily with a dangerous fidelity.  Like his mother he looked 
round with wistful irritation at the example afforded by 
contemporary youth, but he concentrated his attention exclusively 
on the richer circles of his acquaintance, young men who bought 
cars and polo ponies as unconcernedly as he might purchase a 
carnation for his buttonhole, and went for trips to Cairo or the 
Tigris valley with less difficulty and finance-stretching than he 
encountered in contriving a week-end at Brighton.

Gaiety and good-looks had carried Comus successfully and, on the 
whole, pleasantly, through schooldays and a recurring succession of 
holidays; the same desirable assets were still at his service to 
advance him along his road, but it was a disconcerting experience 
to find that they could not be relied on to go all distances at all 
times.  In an animal world, and a fiercely competitive animal world 
at that, something more was needed than the decorative ABANDON of 
the field lily, and it was just that something more which Comus 
seemed unable or unwilling to provide on his own account; it was 
just the lack of that something more which left him sulking with 
Fate over the numerous breakdowns and stumbling-blocks that held 
him up on what he expected to be a triumphal or, at any rate, 
unimpeded progress.

Francesca was, in her own way, fonder of Comus than of anyone else 
in the world, and if he had been browning his skin somewhere east 
of Suez she would probably have kissed his photograph with genuine 
fervour every night before going to bed; the appearance of a 
cholera scare or rumour of native rising in the columns of her 
daily news-sheet would have caused her a flutter of anxiety, and 
she would have mentally likened herself to a Spartan mother 
sacrificing her best-beloved on the altar of State necessities.  
But with the best-beloved installed under her roof, occupying an 
unreasonable amount of cubic space, and demanding daily sacrifices 
instead of providing the raw material for one, her feelings were 
tinged with irritation rather than affection.  She might have