Page 577 - sons-and-lovers

a forlorn figure, looking rather as if nobody owned him.
Paul ran upstairs.
‘My father’s come,’ he said, kissing his mother.
‘Has he?’ she answered wearily.
The old collier came rather frightened into the bed-
room.
‘How dun I find thee, lass?’ he said, going forward and
kissing her in a hasty, timid fashion.
‘Well, I’m middlin’,’ she replied.
‘I see tha art,’ he said. He stood looking down on her.
Then he wiped his eyes with his handkerchief. Helpless, and
as if nobody owned him, he looked.
‘Have you gone on all right?’ asked the wife, rather wea-
rily, as if it were an effort to talk to him.
‘Yis,’ he answered. ‘Er’s a bit behint-hand now and again,
as yer might expect.’
‘Does she have your dinner ready?’ asked Mrs. Morel.
‘Well, I’ve ‘ad to shout at ‘er once or twice,’ he said.
‘And you MUST shout at her if she’s not ready. She WILL
leave things to the last minute.’
She gave him a few instructions. He sat looking at her as
if she were almost a stranger to him, before whom he was
awkward and humble, and also as if he had lost his presence
of mind, and wanted to run. This feeling that he wanted to
run away, that he was on thorns to be gone from so trying a
situation, and yet must linger because it looked better, made
his presence so trying. He put up his eyebrows for misery,
and clenched his fists on his knees, feeling so awkward in
presence of big trouble.

Sons and Lovers