Page:The Trespasser, Lawrence, 1912.djvu/209

Rh heard him turn on the tap in the bathroom; then Beatrice began to breathe spasmodically, catching her breath as if she would sob. But she restrained herself. The faces of the two children set hard with hate.

“He is not worth the flicking of your little finger, mother,” said Vera.

Beatrice moved about with pitiful, groping hands, collecting her sewing and her cottons.

“At any rate, he’s come back red enough,” said Frank, in his grating tone of contempt. “He’s like boiled salmon.”

Beatrice did not answer anything. Frank rose, and stood with his back to the grate, in his father’s characteristic attitude.

“I would come slinking back in a funk!” he said, with a young man’s sneer.

Stretching forward, he put a piece of ham between two pieces of bread, and began to eat the sandwich in large bites. Vera came to the table at this, and began to make herself a more dainty sandwich. Frank watched her with jealous eye.

“There is a little more ham, if you’d like it,” said Beatrice to him. “I kept you some.”

“All right, ma,” he replied. “Fetch it in.”

Beatrice went out to the kitchen.

“And bring the bread-and-butter, too, will you?” called Vera after her.

“The damned coward! Ain’t he a rotten funker?” said Frank, sotto voce, while his mother was out of the room.

Vera did not reply, but she seemed tacitly to agree.

They petted their mother, while she waited on them. At length Frank yawned. He fidgeted a moment or