Page 228 - sons-and-lovers

gar. ‘What is she kept at home for?’
‘On’y for eating everything that’s left in th’ pantry,’ said
Maurice.
‘They don’t forget that potato-pie against our Miriam,’
laughed the father.
She was utterly humiliated. The mother sat in silence,
suffering, like some saint out of place at the brutal board.
It puzzled Paul. He wondered vaguely why all this in-
tense feeling went running because of a few burnt potatoes.
The mother exalted everything—even a bit of housework—
to the plane of a religious trust. The sons resented this; they
felt themselves cut away underneath, and they answered
with brutality and also with a sneering superciliousness.
Paul was just opening out from childhood into man-
hood. This atmosphere, where everything took a religious
value, came with a subtle fascination to him. There was
something in the air. His own mother was logical. Here
there was something different, something he loved, some-
thing that at times he hated.
Miriam quarrelled with her brothers fiercely. Later in
the afternoon, when they had gone away again, her mother
said:
‘You disappointed me at dinner-time, Miriam.’
The girl dropped her head.
‘They are such BRUTES!’ she suddenly cried, looking up
with flashing eyes.
‘But hadn’t you promised not to answer them?’ said the
mother. ‘And I believed in you. I CAN’T stand it when you
wrangle.’