"Pudding," said Mr. Westcott.
"Ye'll be 'aving the pudding when it's ready," says she.
"Damn" from Mr. Westcott but he sits still looking at the table-cloth and
his hand shaking.
To Peter this new thing was beyond all possibility horrible. This new
shaking creature--
"I didn't kill her, you know, Peter," Mr. Westcott says quite smoothly,
when the cloth had been cleared and they are alone. And then suddenly,
"Stay where you are--I have stories to tell you."
Peter, white to the lips, was held in his place. He could not move or
speak. Then during the following two hours, his father, without moving from
his place, poured forth a stream of stories--foul, filthy, horrible beyond
all telling. He related them with no joy or humour or bestial gloating over
their obscenities--only with a staring eye and his fingers twisting and
untwisting on the table-cloth. At last Peter, his head hanging, his cheeks
flaming, crept to his attic.
At breakfast his father was again that other man--stern, immovable, a
rock-where was that trembling shadow of the night before?
And Mrs. Pascoe--once more in her red-faced way, submissive--in her place.
The most abiding impression with Peter, thinking of it afterwards in the
dark lanes that run towards the sea, when the evening was creeping along
the hill, was of a fiery eye gleaming from old grandfather Westcott's pile
of rugs.
Pages:
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184