Page:The White Peacock, Lawrence, 1911.djvu/314

306 black spots had swallowed so many faces they were full up, and couldn’t take any more—and the rest was misty because there were so many faces lapped one over the other—reflected.”

“You do see yourself a bit ghostish——” said he, “on a background of your ancestors. I always think when you stop in an old place like this you sort of keep company with your ancestors too much; I sometimes feel like a bit of the old building walking about; the old feelings of the old folks stick to you like the lichens on the walls; you sort of get hoary.”

“That’s it—it’s true,” asserted the father, “people whose families have shifted about much don’t know how it feels. That’s why I’m going to Canada.”

“And I’m going in a Pub,” said George, “where it’s quite different—plenty of life.”

“Life!” echoed Emily with contempt.

“That’s the word, my wench,” replied her brother, lapsing into the dialect. “That’s what I’m after. We known such a lot, an’ we known nöwt.”

“You do——” said the father, turning to me, “you stay in one place, generation after generation, and you seem to get proud, an’ look on things outside as foolishness. There’s many a thing as any common man knows, as we haven’t a glimpse of. We keep on thinking and feeling the same, year after year, till we’ve only got one side; an’ I suppose they’ve done it before us.”

“It’s ‘Good-night an’ God bless you,’ to th’ owd place, granfeythers an’ grammothers,’” [sic] laughed George as he ran upstairs—“an’ off we go on the gallivant,” he shouted from the landing.

His father shook his head, saying: