She was disappointed not to be able to detect anything boyish in her
brother. Very, very sorry. She had not seen him for fifteen years or
thereabouts, except on three or four occasions for a few hours at a time.
No. Not a trace of the boy, he used to be, left in him.
She fell silent for a moment and I mused idly on the boyhood of little
Fyne. I could not imagine what it might have been like. His dominant
trait was clearly the remnant of still earlier days, because I've never
seen such staring solemnity as Fyne's except in a very young baby. But
where was he all that time? Didn't he suffer contamination from the
indolence of Captain Anthony, I inquired. I was told that Mr. Fyne was
very little at the cottage at the time. Some colleague of his was
convalescing after a severe illness in a little seaside village in the
neighbourhood and Fyne went off every morning by train to spend the day
with the elderly invalid who had no one to look after him. It was a very
praiseworthy excuse for neglecting his brother-in-law "the son of the
poet, you know," with whom he had nothing in common even in the remotest
degree.
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