Page:Des Grieux, The Prelude to Teleny.djvu/148

 screen, and—by the noise they made—it was evident that they had gone to bed together.

They at first kept quiet for some time, and—in the meanwhile—I began to ponder.

How was it that the good God—who is always horrified at what children do—allows this matron to go to bed every night with another William?

Can he wink at such doings, does he smile at their pranks?

Surely if he has to cry at all the naughty things children do, and the dirty things grown up people indulge in, why then his own life is not worth living.

Meanwhile the two in bed were rehearsing the little game that had been played the evening before. They first proceeded quietly, like a sleam-engine just started, but after a few strokes, the speed of the piston-rod increased rapidly.

It was the same thumping and bumping, the same inarticulate sounds of puffing and puffing, of breathing painfully and panting pleasurably, even the same hoarse gurglings, to which the thuds on the mattress, the