Page 575 - sons-and-lovers

‘He thinks it’s only a tumour!’ cried Annie to her moth-
er. ‘And he can sweal it away.’
‘I KNEW he could,’ protested Mrs. Morel scornfully.
She pretended not to notice that Paul had gone out of
the room. He sat in the kitchen, smoking. Then he tried to
brush some grey ash off his coat. He looked again. It was
one of his mother’s grey hairs. It was so long! He held it up,
and it drifted into the chimney. He let go. The long grey hair
floated and was gone in the blackness of the chimney.
The next day he kissed her before going back to work. It
was very early in the morning, and they were alone.
‘You won’t fret, my boy!’ she said.
‘No, mother.’
‘No; it would be silly. And take care of yourself.’
‘Yes,’ he answered. Then, after a while: ‘And I shall come
next Saturday, and shall bring my father?’
‘I suppose he wants to come,’ she replied. ‘At any rate, if
he does you’ll have to let him.’
He kissed her again, and stroked the hair from her tem-
ples, gently, tenderly, as if she were a lover.
‘Shan’t you be late?’ she murmured.
‘I’m going,’ he said, very low.
Still he sat a few minutes, stroking the brown and grey
hair from her temples.
‘And you won’t be any worse, mother?’
‘No, my son.’
‘You promise me?’
‘Yes; I won’t be any worse.’
He kissed her, held her in his arms for a moment, and

Sons and Lovers