Part 43 (1/2)

She shook her head at him. ”You're your father all over again,” she said.

”I'll swear I'm not,” said Horry.

”If you were half as polite as your father it wouldn't be a bad thing.”

There was a sound of explosions in the drive. ”There's Ralph come to settle it himself,” said f.a.n.n.y. And at that point, Mr. Waddington came out on them, suddenly, from the cloak-room.

”What's all this?” he said. He looked with disgust at the skates dangling from Barbara's hand. He went out into the porch and looked with disgust at Ralph and at the motor-bicycles. He thought with bitterness of the Cirencester ca.n.a.l. He couldn't skate. Even when he was Horry's age he hadn't skated. He couldn't ride a motor-bicycle. When he looked at the beastly things and thought of their complicated machinery and their evil fascination for Barbara, he hated them. He hated Horry and Ralph standing up before Barbara, handsome, vibrating with youth and health and energy.

”I won't have Barbara riding on that thing. It isn't safe. If he skids on the snow he'll break her neck.”

”Much more likely to break his own neck,” said Horry.

In his savage interior Mr. Waddington wished he would, and Horry too.

”He won't skid,” said Barbara; ”if he does I'll hop off.”

”We'll come back,” said Ralph, ”if we don't get on all right.”

They started in a duet of explosions, the motor-bicycles hissing and crunching through the light snow. Barbara, swinging on Ralph's carrier, waved her hand light-heartedly to Mr. Waddington. He hated Barbara; but far more than Barbara he hated Horry, and far more than Horry he hated Ralph.

”He'd no business to take her,” he said. ”She'd no business to go.”

”You can't stop them, my dear,” said f.a.n.n.y; ”they're too young.”

”Well, if they come back with their necks broken they'll have only themselves to thank.”

He took a ferocious pleasure in thinking of Horry and Ralph and Barbara with their necks broken.

f.a.n.n.y stared at him. ”I wonder what's made him so cross,” she thought.

”He looks as if he'd got a chill on the liver.”.... ”Horatio, have you got a chill on the liver?”

”Now, what on earth put that into your head?”

”Your face. You look just a little off colour, darling.”

At that moment Mr. Waddington began to sneeze.

”There, I knew you'd caught cold. You oughtn't to go standing about in draughts.”

”I haven't caught cold,” said Mr. Waddington.

But he shut himself up in his library and stayed there, huddled in his armchair. From time to time he leaned forward and stooped over the hearth, holding his chest and stomach as near as possible to the fire.

s.h.i.+vers like thin icicles kept on slipping down his spine.

At lunch-time he complained that there was nothing he could eat, and before the meal was over he went back to his library and his fire. f.a.n.n.y sat with him there.

”I wish you wouldn't go standing out in the cold,” she said. She knew that on Sat.u.r.day he had stood for more than ten minutes in the fallen snow of the park to be photographed. And he wouldn't wear his overcoat because he thought he looked younger without it, and slenderer.