Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/378

 Molly Pentreath. She had taken a minute flat at the top of a high building not half a mile from Westminster Abbey, and Sorrell went to tea with her. Behind his son's broad back—too! And Sorrell saw her writing-table, and her books and papers spread about, and felt himself in the midst of her young, individual, creative keenness. A thinker and a worker, and full of adroit mischief. She had caught Sorrell's old time cry of "No secrets." She confessed to her hatreds. "I don't pretend to like what I don't like. I'm a bad citizen. I mind my own business and write about other people's business. The only children in this block are three flights down, otherwise I should not be here. Noise; it is like a slap, and I want to slap back. Bad for one's work—that. And I don't love humanity, and I'm not an improver. God knows—there is enough work in your own job without our making jobs for each other like the Socialists. Nasty people. Want me to pretend with them that I am thinking more of seeing that my neighbours are getting their dinner before I get my own. I'm not. I'm cheerfully and intelligently selfish."

She made Sorrell laugh.

"Does Kit read Punch?"

Sorrell thought not. Kit was busy with his job.

"Well, you can tell him that when he is caught chuckling over Punch—I'll marry him—with reservations."

Sorrell went back to the Pelican, and his beloved garden, but not before his gardener's soul had discovered in Molly Pentreath characteristics that were worth perpetuating. If Kit needed a woman in his life, well—Sorrell thought that Molly might be that woman. She would bring to the comradeship the security of a subtle understanding. Her very insistence upon individual freedom would make for freshness; and the fruit would retain its flavour and its tang. Those flat, pulpy marriages whose only permanence depended upon a commercial slavery that rendered escape too costly! How insecure they were, for to be stuck in the mud of a mutual boredom could not be called security. Sorrell valued security, as men with gardens do. It is a high