Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/14

 ears, ever since his demobilization, life had been to Sorrell Tike some huge trampling beast, and he—a furtive thin down in the mud, panting, dodging, bewildered, resentf and afraid. Now he had succeeded in strapping that portmanteau. "They were slipping away from under the shadow of the great beast. Sornething had turned up to help the man to save his last made-to-measure suit, his boy, and the remnant of his gentility.

Horrible word! He stroked his little black moustache, and considered the portmanteau.

"Well,—that's that, son."

He smiled faintly, and Kit's more radiant smile broke out in response. To the boy the leaving of this beastly room in a beastly street was a glorious adventure, for they were going into the country.

"It will want a label, pater."

"It will. 'Sorrell and son, passengers, Staunton'!"

"How's it going to the station?"

Sorrell rose, dusting the knees of his trousers. Each night he folded them carefully and put them under the mattress.

"I've arranged with Mr. Sawkins. He'll take it early and leave it in the cloak-room."

For Sorrell still kept his trousers creased, nor had he reached that state of mind when a man can contemplate with unaffected naturalness the handling of his own luggage. There were still things he did and did not do. He was a gentleman. True, society had come near to pushing him off the shelf of his class-consciousness into the welter of the casual and the unemployed, but, though hanging by his hands, he had refused to drop. Hence Mr. Sawkins, and Mr. Sawkins' coster's barrow, transport for the Sorrell baggage.

"What time is the train, pater?"

"Ten twenty."

"And what time do we get to Staunton?"

"About three."

"And where are we going to stay?"

"Oh,—I shall get a room before fixing up with Mr. Verity. He may want us to live over—over the shop."

There were times when Sorrell felt very self-conscious in the presence of the boy. The pose he had adopted before Christopher dated from the war, and it had survived various