Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/220



ORRELL was lying in a punt on a luxurious superfluity of red and blue cushions, his grey hat placed carefully beside him, a good cigar sending its perfume and blue smoke upwards into the trailing foliage of a weeping willow. The punt, propelled by Kit who sat and dipped a lazy paddle, had glided in under the willow and come to rest there. The evening was very warm and still; the soft sheen of the river between the bridges reflected many other punts and splashes of colour, reminding Sorrell of those brilliant and quaint little mosaics made of flower petals pressed upon brown paper under a piece of glass which a country girl had taught him to arrange with his childish fingers. He had dined in hall with Christopher. Like Calverley he felt that fate could not touch him. He looked at his neat brown shoes, and his well-cut, well-pressed grey trousers. He enjoyed the fretted gold and the greenness of the weeping willow. He looked at Kit sitting square to the sunset with the glow of it upon his face.

"We have arrived," was Sorrell's thought; "every damned piece of luggage that I struggled with in the old days was worth it. Life is good."

A punt-load of parents and young things drifted past them, and the dark eyes of one of the young things dwelt interestedly upon Kit. He was worth a girl's glance. He seemed both aware of the dark eyes and unaware of them.

"Going to make your bump to-morrow?" asked the voice of Kit's father.

Christopher came out of a brown study, but his immediate awareness of life was not concerned with the May races.

"We ought to. We are faster than our second boat. They don't allow it—of course."

His glance raised itself to the glowing tops of the elms,