Page 172 - sons-and-lovers

He was not very tall, and pale, with thick chestnut hair,
irregular features, and a wide, full mouth. She was like a
small bird. He often called her a ‘robinet”. Though naturally
rather quiet, he would sit and chatter with her for hours tell-
ing her about his home. The girls all liked to hear him talk.
They often gathered in a little circle while he sat on a bench,
and held forth to them, laughing. Some of them regarded
him as a curious little creature, so serious, yet so bright and
jolly, and always so delicate in his way with them. They all
liked him, and he adored them. Polly he felt he belonged to.
Then Connie, with her mane of red hair, her face of apple-
blossom, her murmuring voice, such a lady in her shabby
black frock, appealed to his romantic side.
‘When you sit winding,’ he said, ‘it looks as if you were
spinning at a spinning-wheel—it looks ever so nice. You re-
mind me of Elaine in the ‘Idylls of the King’. I’d draw you
if I could.’
And she glanced at him blushing shyly. And later on he
had a sketch he prized very much: Connie sitting on the
stool before the wheel, her flowing mane of red hair on her
rusty black frock, her red mouth shut and serious, running
the scarlet thread off the hank on to the reel.
With Louie, handsome and brazen, who always seemed
to thrust her hip at him, he usually joked.
Emma was rather plain, rather old, and condescending.
But to condescend to him made her happy, and he did not
mind.
‘How do you put needles in?’ he asked.
‘Go away and don’t bother.’

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