Page 279 - sons-and-lovers

something to make us all ashamed,’ said Mrs. Morel.
‘Well, I should respect him more,’ said Paul.
‘I very much doubt it,’ said his mother coldly.
They went on with breakfast.
‘Are you fearfully fond of him?’ Paul asked his mother.
‘What do you ask that for?’
‘Because they say a woman always like the youngest
best.’
‘She may do—but I don’t. No, he wearies me.’
‘And you’d actually rather he was good?’
‘I’d rather he showed some of a man’s common sense.’
Paul was raw and irritable. He also wearied his mother
very often. She saw the sunshine going out of him, and she
resented it.
As they were finishing breakfast came the postman with
a letter from Derby. Mrs. Morel screwed up her eyes to look
at the address.
‘Give it here, blind eye!’ exclaimed her son, snatching it
away from her.
She started, and almost boxed his ears.
‘It’s from your son, Arthur,’ he said.
‘What now—-!’ cried Mrs. Morel.
‘My dearest Mother,’’ Paul read, ‘I don’t know what made
me such a fool. I want you to come and fetch me back from
here. I came with Jack Bredon yesterday, instead of going to
work, and enlisted. He said he was sick of wearing the seat
of a stool out, and, like the idiot you know I am, I came away
with him.
‘I have taken the King’s shilling, but perhaps if you came

Sons and Lovers