Page 61 - Gullivers

to have forgotten where our house was or the configuration of the region, and had the gall to ask his way home of several neighbours. The Hobbs’s governess, the drapier on Green Street, and Martin Ludder, a local clergyman, told us so themselves. As if that was not bad enough, he repeatedly and haughtily admonished them – his former friends and neighbours - to clear the way for him. I need hardly tell you that this did not go down well. Next, he got it into his head that we had all shrunk in size, although I had grown a full four inches in his absence and Betty was turning into a grand young woman. I was outraged when he accused poor mother of starving us – mother, who prided herself on her fine table, with loins of mutton and joints of beef on the sideboard at every repast and gallons of cream sent regularly from the dairy! It didn’t take long to figure out that he had lost his wits. Temporarily, Mother said. But the truth is that he was never the same again.
The fact of the matter is that his rapid departure on yet another dubious odyssey was a blessed relief to us all. Aster he had spent a week on dry land,
a week filled for me with fending off enquiries about his state of mind and suffering Sutcliff ’s sneers, I prevailed on Mother to consent to his departure, and an unhappy peace descended on us. Thereaster she seemed to harden. Certainly, there were no more teary intervals.
Father did return again to the fold, with fanciful tales of Laputa and Balnibarbi and Japan, and he stayed home for a full five months. I conceded to an uneasy truce; by then I was more interested in what victuals were offered on the dinner table and how I could conspire to spend time alone in my chambers, in the way of sullen youths. The household had just learned to accommodate his edgy presence when, inevitably, another offer of a voyage materialised, and before you could say Robinson Crusœ, the maid was filling his trunk with linens. Six months aster his departure mother gave birth to a sickly, squalling infant girl.
I couldn’t but note how little thought the child’s begetter accorded the shred of life he had created. And when, on a Tuesday morning six weeks aster her arrival
III. Lemuel Gulliver’s Children 55