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make no mistakes when he said it to his uncle. His uncle
then would be pleased; he would see that the boy’s heart was
in the right place. But when Mrs. Carey came to the dining-
room and was about to go in, she heard a sound that made
her stop suddenly. Her heart gave a little jump. She turned
away and quietly slipped out of the front-door. She walked
round the house till she came to the dining-room window
and then cautiously looked in. Philip was still sitting on the
chair she had put him in, but his head was on the table bur-
ied in his arms, and he was sobbing desperately. She saw
the convulsive movement of his shoulders. Mrs. Carey was
frightened. A thing that had always struck her about the
child was that he seemed so collected. She had never seen
him cry. And now she realised that his calmness was some
instinctive shame of showing his fillings: he hid himself to
weep.
Without thinking that her husband disliked being wak-
ened suddenly, she burst into the drawing-room.
‘William, William,’ she said. ‘The boy’s crying as though
his heart would break.’
Mr. Carey sat up and disentangled himself from the rug
about his legs.
‘What’s he got to cry about?’
‘I don’t know.... Oh, William, we can’t let the boy be un-
happy. D’you think it’s our fault? If we’d had children we’d
have known what to do.’
Mr. Carey looked at her in perplexity. He felt extraordi-
narily helpless.
‘He can’t be crying because I gave him the collect to learn.