It was not for the double first at Oxford that she gave it. There had
been a moment when it had hurt her to think that he probably accepted a
good deal of luxury in his existence out of his mother's abundant
fortune, but it was gone now. Even as a schoolboy he had guessed whence
at least a part of that wealth really came, and had refused to touch a
penny of it. But Lushington felt as if he were being combed with
red-hot needles from head to foot, and the perspiration stood on his
forehead. It would have filled him with shame to mop it with his
handkerchief and yet he felt that in another moment it would run down.
The awful circumstances of his dream came vividly back to him, and he
could positively hear Margaret telling him that he looked hot, so loud
that the whole house could understand what she said. But at this point
something almost worse happened.
Madame Bonanni's motherly but eagle eye detected the tiny beads on his
brow. With a cry of distress she sprang to her feet and began to wipe
them away with the corner of her napkin that was tied round her neck,
talking all the time.
'My darling!' she cried. 'I always forget that you feel hot when I feel
cold! Angelo, open everything--the windows, the doors! Why do you stand
there like a dressed-up doll in a tailor's window? Don't you see that
he is going to have a fit?' 'Mother, mother! Please don't!' protested the unfortunate Lushington,
who was now as red as a beet.
But Madame Bonanni took the lower end of her napkin by the corners, as
if it had been an apron, and fanned him furiously, though he put up his
hands and cried for mercy.
'He is always too hot,' she said, suddenly desisting and sitting down
again. 'He always was, even when he was a baby.' She was now at work on
a very complicated salad. 'But then,' she went on, speaking between
mouthfuls, 'I used to lay him down in the middle of my big bed, with
nothing on but his little shirt, and he would kick and crow until he
was quite cool.' Again Margaret bit her lip, but this time it was of no use, and after a
conscientious effort to be quiet she broke into irrepressible laughter.
In a moment Lushington laughed too, and presently he felt quite cool
and comfortable again, feeling that after all he had been ridiculous
only when he was a baby.
'We used to call him Tommy,' said Madame Bonanni, putting away her
plate and laying her knife and fork upon it crosswise. 'Poor little
Tommy! How long ago that was! After his father died I changed his name,
you know, and then it seemed as if little Tommy were dead too.' There was visible moisture in the big dark eyes for an instant.
Margaret felt sorry for the strange, contradictory creature, half
child, half genius, and all mother.