Page:Following darkness (IA followingdarknes00reid).pdf/60

 doing so. My father was correcting exercises. The books were arranged in two piles in front of him—those he had already finished with, and those he had not yet touched. Behind him was the wall, with its cheap, ugly, flowered paper, and illuminated texts. I glanced at him from time to time over the top of my book. There was perpetual dinginess in his appearance; his linen was not often scrupulously clean, and his nails never were. Just now I wanted to ask him to stop snuffing. How could I read while he kept on making such disgusting noises! He had a peculiar way of breathing through his nose so as to produce a sort of whistling sound, which I could never get accustomed to. Often I had gone upstairs and sat in an ice-cold bedroom merely to be rid of it.

Suddenly he looked up over his spectacles and addressed me across the table. "I intended to ask you about that book you have brought home. Who gave it to you?"

I at once assumed an air of elaborate nonchalance. "Nobody gave it to me. I found it in the book-case."

"What are you reading in it?"

"'Venus and Adonis.'"

"I don't like the books you have been reading lately."

"But this is Shakespeare!" I exclaimed, feigning tremendous astonishment.

"I don't care who it is. Why can't you read what other boys read?"

"I thought he was supposed to be the greatest poet in the world!"

"You know very well what I mean. If you do read him, why don't you read the plays—'Julius Cæsar?'"

"I'd rather have poems than plays. What is the harm in this?"

"The harm is that it is not suited to your age. it is full of all kinds of voluptuous images and thoughts. You have been too much at Derryaghy lately."