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coursed pleasantly on the above-mentioned subjects.
Little by little she began to talk of Basil--of
how well he had done at school--"he was in the
First XI, you know"--of how everyone liked him,
of how proud his father would have been of the
boy had he lived, of how thankful she had been
that Basil had never been "wild." "Of course I
always urge him to be with young people, but he
really seems to prefer being with me."
She said it with a kind of nice modest pleasure
in the fact.
But for once Mr. Parker Pyne did not make the
usual tactful response he could usually achieve so
easily. He said instead:
"Oh! well, there seem to be plenty of young
people here--not in the hotel, but roundabout."
At that, he noticed, Mrs. Chester stiffened. She
said: Of course there were a lot of Artists. Perhaps
she was very old-fashioned--real art, of course,
was different, but a lot of young people just made
that sort of thing an excuse for lounging about
and doing nothing--and the girls drank a lot too
much.
On the following day Basil said to Mr. Parker
Pyne:
"I'm awfully glad you turned up here, sir--especially
for my mother's sake. She likes having
you to talk to in the evenings."
"What did you do when you were first here?" "As a matter of fact we used to play piquet." "I see."