Page 596 - sons-and-lovers

Again Dawes looked at him.
‘Since August she’s been getting tired of me,’ Morel re-
peated.
The two men were very quiet together. Paul suggested a
game of draughts. They played in silence.
‘I s’ll go abroad when my mother’s dead,’ said Paul.
‘Abroad!’ repeated Dawes.
‘Yes; I don’t care what I do.’
They continued the game. Dawes was winning.
‘I s’ll have to begin a new start of some sort,’ said Paul;
‘and you as well, I suppose.’
He took one of Dawes’s pieces.
‘I dunno where,’ said the other.
‘Things have to happen,’ Morel said. ‘It’s no good doing
anything—at least—no, I don’t know. Give me some toffee.’
The two men ate sweets, and began another game of
draughts.
‘What made that scar on your mouth?’ asked Dawes.
Paul put his hand hastily to his lips, and looked over the
garden.
‘I had a bicycle accident,’ he said.
Dawes’s hand trembled as he moved the piece.
‘You shouldn’t ha’ laughed at me,’ he said, very low.
‘When?’
‘That night on Woodborough Road, when you and her
passed me—you with your hand on her shoulder.’
‘I never laughed at you,’ said Paul.
Dawes kept his fingers on the draught-piece.
‘I never knew you were there till the very second when