Rosalie’s father scowls upon Harold and delivers
his morning greeting. No “Good morning,
dear,” as her mother would have said. “Aren’t
you gone yet?” like a bark from a kennel.
“Just going.”
Wonderful father! A moment before there had been
not the remotest sign of Harold ever going. Now
Harold is very anxious to go. He is very anxious
to go but, like Robert, he will not abandon the field
without defiance of the authority next above his own.
While he collects his things he whistles. Rosalie
shudders (but deliciously as one in old Rome watching
the gladiators).
“Do you see the clock, sir?”
“Yes.”
“Well, quicken yourself, sir. Quicken yourself.”
“The clock’s fast.”
“It is not fast, sir. And let me add that
the clock with which you could keep time of a morning,
or of any hour in the day, would have to be an uncommonly
slow clock.”
Harold with elaborate unconcern adjusts his trouser
clips. “I should have thought that was
more a matter for the Bank to complain of, if necessary.
I may be wrong, of course——”
“You may be wrong, sir, because in my experience
you almost invariably are wrong and never more so
than when you lad-di-dah that you are right.
You may be wrong, but let me tell you what you may
not be. You may not be impertinent to me, sir.
You may not lad-di-dah me, sir.”
“Father, I really do not see why at my age I
should be hounded out of the house like this every
morning.”
“You are hounded out, as you elegantly express
it, because morning after morning, owing to your disgustingly
slothful habits, you clash with me, sir. My breakfast
is delayed because you clash with me, and the house
is delayed because you clash with me, and the whole
parish is delayed because you clash with me.”
“Perhaps you’re not aware that Robert
clashes with me.”
“Dash Robert! Are you going or are you
not going?”
He goes.
“Bring back the paper.”
He brings it back.
Wonderful father!
Rosalie’s father gives a tug at the bell cord
that would have dislocated the neck of a horse.
The cord comes away in his hand. He hurls it
across the room.
Glorious father!
There was a most frightful storm one night and Rosalie,
in Anna’s bed with Flora crowded in also and
Hilda shivering in her nightgown beside them, too
young to be frightened but with her sister’s
fright beginning to communicate itself to her, said,
“Ask father to go and stop it.”
“Fool!” cried Flora. “How could
father stop the storm?”
Why not?
Flora’s sharp and astounding reply to that question
of Rosalie’s was recalled by Rosalie, with hurt
surprise at Flora’s sharpness and ignorance,
when, shortly afterwards, she found in a book a man
who could, and actually did, stop a storm. This
was a man called Prospero in a book called “The
Tempest.”
