Page 372 - sons-and-lovers

‘At one time,’ she replied, ‘I could have run up that hill a
good deal better than you.’
‘What’s the good of that to ME?’ he cried, hitting his fist
on the wall. Then he became plaintive. ‘It’s too bad of you to
be ill. Little, it is—‘
‘Ill!’ she cried. ‘I’m a bit old, and you’ll have to put up
with it, that’s all.’
They were quiet. But it was as much as they could bear.
They got jolly again over tea. As they sat by Brayford, watch-
ing the boats, he told her about Clara. His mother asked
him innumerable questions.
‘Then who does she live with?’
‘With her mother, on Bluebell Hill.’
‘And have they enough to keep them?’
‘I don’t think so. I think they do lace work.’
‘And wherein lies her charm, my boy?’
‘I don’t know that she’s charming, mother. But she’s nice.
And she seems straight, you know—not a bit deep, not a
bit.’
‘But she’s a good deal older than you.’
‘She’s thirty, I’m going on twenty-three.’
‘You haven’t told me what you like her for.’
‘Because I don’t know—a sort of defiant way she’s got—a
sort of angry way.’
Mrs. Morel considered. She would have been glad now
for her son to fall in love with some woman who would—
she did not know what. But he fretted so, got so furious
suddenly, and again was melancholic. She wished he knew
some nice woman— She did not know what she wished, but

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