Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/333

 "Pater,—would you?"

"I should."

The wind changed in the night, and when Sorrell looked through his window and saw that no smoke was drifting over the branches of the pear tree he claimed the omen to be good. Yes, there was a soft moist breathing from the south-west, a movement with balm and beauty in it, and as he stood at his window he saw that the face of the earth had relaxed. No longer was it grey and embittered, but dewy and gentle; the birds were singing, and as he stood there Sorrell's heart uttered an inarticulate prayer. "O, blind and incalculable malice, and all cold, interfering circumstance, go where the north wind has gone—this day."

Descending early to breakfast he heard Kit spiashing in his bath. A cheerful sound—that, not suggestive of nerves and morbid self-consciousness, and while waiting for his son, Sorrell strolled out into the garden and exchanged a few words with his flowers. They were looking happy, and the hyacinths were scenting the air. He bent down and propped with twigs two or three brilliant heads that had had to bow before the wind.

He heard his son's voice.

"Shall I make the tea, pater?"

"I'm ready. What have they sent us over?"

"Porridge, and kidneys and bacon. I'm hungry."

Sorrell turned to go in, smiling back at his garden. A bath and a good hunger, and the sun shining upon the grass, and the birds singing! Well,—well. He had a feeling that he need not be afraid.

Sorrell walked with his son up the long, white-tiled corridor out of which other brilliantly white spaces opened. They came to a brown stairway going up in the whiteness of the wall, and here Kit paused.

"Up there, pater."

He smiled.

"One of the middle rows. Suppose you will be all right?"