Sidney could tell at once of course that Vance did not like the arrangement at all. At the same time he bombarded his brother with a hundred questions about the “post,” as he called it, and the great sprawling house where his duties were to hold him, and about Mrs. Vaisey herself.

“You’ll never be able to stand it in the world,” Vance finally gave judgment when Sidney had described his “reception.”

“But, Vance, God Almighty, it’s always you who were telling me I’ve got to go out and face people . . . Now I’ve gone and done it, you’re cross and put out. When even your mentor, Dr. Ulric, is behind my move!”

“Being shut up with a moody, sick boy and his domineering, rich mother is not my idea of getting out and meeting people,” Vance snapped. “And you have no training to be a male nurse which is just what you’ll be.”

“Well thanks, Vance, for your encouragement. . . . At least Irene does not consider that I will be what you call me.” His face grew taut with anger.

“So you call her Irene already?” Vance observed.

“I tried, Vance, to tell you a little about some of the things that happened to me in prison. . . . You say I ought to go out and meet people. Maybe my trouble is I have met too many people while you are the one who’s never been out in the world and seen what it’s like. . . . And you don’t want to see I have changed . . . So taking care of a young man won’t be hard on me after what I went through. . . .”

“You never liked taking care of me when I was a baby . . . Mother told me how nauseated you got when you had to change my diapers, how fretful and restless you were when she left me alone with you . . .”

“You were a very ill-­tempered and irritable brat,” Sidney smiled in spite of himself. “Just the way you are now. . . . But, Vance, prison took all the starch out of me . . . Don’t you see? And I’ll feel I’m doing some good taking care of this boy . . . Besides I used to know him . . .”

As he said this both young men exchanged eloquent looks with one another. The words “the renderer” were on both their lips, for everybody knew that Gareth had also been his pupil.

Partly because the stairs had made him realize he was not so robust as he had been when he was a star football player, Sidney had resigned himself to going by limousine to Mrs. Vaisey’s, though the stuffiness of both the chauffeur and car made him wish he had walked.