Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/221

 and came back to survey the river. There was laughter under Clare bridge, and someone was splashing water with a paddle.

"I have had a letter from South Audley Street, pater."

"O," said Sorrell beneath the calm drift of his cigar smoke.

"She wants me to spend a few days there when I go down. A dance or something."

He looked questioningly at his father.

"Do you want to go?"

"Not much. Do you think I ought to?"

Sorrell was silent for a few seconds.

"There is no ought about it. But there need be no reason why you shouldn't."

"I'm not particularly keen on dancing. Would you go, pater, if she asked you?"

His father took a little time to answer the question.

"No,—I don't think I should. Not prejudice, you know. I have no feeling against anybody, so long as they don't interfere. One of the things in life is to keep clear of incompatibles."

Kit stroked the water with his paddle.

"You have got to set yourself a course. Most chaps just drift. Girls and things. You know, pater. And then—there is hurting people's feelings."

"Quite. But if you have got feelings, don't make the mistake of imagining that everybody else has got just the same feelings."

"I suppose they haven't."

"No."

"Some of them play up."

"The takers always play up to the givers."

Kit pondered this saying.

"You are one of the givers, pater."

"O, not always. Don't throw yourself away on the crowd."

There was much more talk between them under the edge of the dusk, with the sentimental river dividing the conventional sentiment of the grey colleges and the green spaces. Kit paddled the punt slowly up stream. They passed other punts with cargoes of hard young she-things; and Sorrell found himself wondering what Kit thought of