Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/300

 cupied his old room in the cottage, meeting many friendly faces, but none so wise in its friendliness as his father's. Kit witnessed his father's excursions into the world of flowers, and wondered at it. Sorrell seemed rooted in his garden. He no longer seemed to care for long country walks or early morning rides. Flowers fascinated him. He had taken to experimenting in hybridism, and under his gauze cages delphiniums and sweet peas and pansies lived like sacred virgins waiting upon their annunciation.

Christopher was a little troubled. He was alive to a subtle change in his father. Sorrell was gentler, slower in his movements, more bent, yet obviously happy. Kit's eyes were young. He observed the externals, the objective phenomena, for he had been trained to observe signs, and to attach more importance to them than to symptoms. He appraised life with his eyes and hands.

Sorrell was growing very grey. His temporal arteries stood out on little tortuous curves, and the son, watching the father stooping over some plant and growing flushed in the face, would remind himself that Sorrell had never spared himself. He had taken hard knocks; and he had never whimpered.

In the evenings Kit noticed that his father appeared very tired,—but he was far less tired than Kit imagined, for the pleasant, meditative languor of the older man was not quite understood by the younger one. In a certain way their positions became reversed. Kit did not advise his father upon his ties and trousers, or try to renovate the old boy, but he did feel responsible for Sorrell's health.

"Why don't you slack off a bit, pater?"

He was sitting askew on the window-sill, watching a sunset, while Sorrell lay in a long chair, puffing at a pipe.

"I am slacking," said his father.

Kit's silence was argumentative.

"You haven't had a decent holiday"

"I could have had"

"Well,—why not? The fact is—you have been carrying me on your back."

Sorrell, lying with ha't-closed eyes, let the sweet humour of his affection gleam under lowered eyelids.

"Life gets more automatic. The Pelican is a very obliging bird"