Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/128

 "A Captain Sorrell to see you."

Mr. Porteous withdrew a flue-brush. He looked hot and cheerful.

"Sorrell? Don't know the name. What's he want?"

"I didn't ask him."

"All right. I'll go and see."

He would have gone as he was had not his daughter insisted that a sooty face and hands were sacrilegious, and that he must put on a collar and slip a pair of detachable cuffs over the sleeves of his grey flannel shirt.

"You can't go in like that."

Mr. Porteous showed a very neat set of false teeth.

"I'm a bounder, my dear; I know it. Who was it said that Peter and Paul were bounders? Anyhow—I take off my hat to him."

Miss Porteous sighed.

In the interview that followed Sorrell and Mr. Robert Porteous discovered in each other a mutual surprise, and also an element of delight in their surprise.

"You'll excuse me—but our kitchen flue was stopped up. A rather sooty undertaking. What can I do for you, Captain Sorrell?"

Sorrell was absorbing Mr. Porteous, the squareness and the muscularity of him, his short, slightly bowed and stalwart legs, his round face and vast bald head with its butter-coloured halo. An uncouth, clumsy, powerful, yet intelligent figure, with boyish and bright blue eyes.

"I hear you take pupils, sir."

"I do when I can get 'em, day pupils."

"I have a boy. I'm head porter at the Pelican Inn."

"Head porter. Splendid!"

Mr. Porteous made a movement as of bouncing in his chair. His false teeth gleamed. For years Winstonbury had been trying to suppress him, to squash him into a decent dullness, but Mr. Porteous's joy in life was of such a resiliency that the natural and eager swell of it returned. To him it was really splendid that a captain should be a hotel porter.

"How old's the boy?"

"Nearly thirteen. At present he is at the town school. It was a question of funds."

Porteous nodded.