Page:Walpole - Fortitude.djvu/47

 to the evening meal as the ticking of the marble clock. But his beef had to be cut up for him into very tiny pieces and that gave Aunt Jessie a great deal of work, so that his appeals for a second helping were considered abominable selfishness.

“Oh, my dear, just a leetle piece of beef” (this from the very heart of the cushions). “Just the leetlest piece of beef for a poor old man—such a leetle piece he had, and he's had such a hunger.” No answer to this and at last a strange noise from the cushions like the sound of dogs quarrelling. At last again, “Oh, just the leetlest piece of beef for a poor old man—” and then whimpering and “poor old man” repeated at intervals that lengthened gradually into sleep.

At last the meal was over, the things had been cleared away, and Peter was bending over a sum in preparation for lessons on Monday. Such a sum—add this and this and this and this and then divide it by that and multiply the result by this! and the figures (bad ill-written figures) crept over the page and there were smudgy finger marks, and always between every other line “London, looking-glasses, and fat Mr. Zanti laughing until the tears ran down his face.” Such a strange world where all these things could be so curiously confused, all of them, one supposed, having their purpose and meaning—even grandfather—and even 2469 X 2312 X 6201, and ever so many more until they ran races round the page and up and down and in and out.

And then suddenly into the middle of the silence his father's voice:

"What are you doing there?”

“Sums, father—for Monday.”

“You won't go back on Monday” (and this without the Cornish Times moving an inch).

“Not go back?”

“No. You are going away to school—to Devonshire—on Tuesday week.”

And Peter's pencil fell clattering on to the paper, and the answer to that sum is still an open question.