Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/84

 mulberry tree the trunk of which had had to be trussed up with a chain.

"Don't push him too much."

"I know what you mean."

"Education; damned rot—most of it. The healthy young idlers often do best in the end. They don't get all their individuality compressed into a mould. If I had a boy"

He smiled at Sorrell.

"We bachelors and spinsters! Well, we do see something of the game. I'd let my boy play hard; I'd have him taught to box; I wouldn't have him crammed. Natural growth. Later I should give him the best tutor who was to be had."

"And what about his career?"

"Leave it to his natural appetite. In a clean, straight boy who has been treated healthily the appetite is bound to develop. Surely? And then let him go ahead. Tell him to go ahead like blazes."

So, the autumn came and Christopher went to school, and Sorrell, in his blue coat with the brass buttons, began to carry luggage up and down the stairs of the Pelican. He carried it more easily than he had carried it up the stairs of the Angel Inn at Staunton, for his heart was lighter. The new world was a beneficent world because of the man who ruled it. And Sorrell, piling logs and coal upon the fire in the hall, felt the glow and the cheerfulness of it. In the garden the old trees were magnificently coloured, and the vivid grass was flaked with gold.

One of Sorreli's most pleasant memories was of walking in the garden just as the sun was setting at the end of a still October day. Robins were singing, and from the window of a sitting-room came the sound of music. Roland was playing Chopin's First Prelude. The slanting sun poured through the trees. The robins sang.