behind him. Never for a minute would she admit to herself how heavy and
anxious her heart was because of him.
Also he talked a good deal now of a girl he had met at a dance, a
handsome brunette, quite young, and a lady, after whom the men were
running thick and fast.
"I wonder if you would run, my boy," his mother wrote to him, "unless
you saw all the other men chasing her too. You feel safe enough and vain
enough in a crowd. But take care, and see how you feel when you find
yourself alone, and in triumph." William resented these things, and
continued the chase. He had taken the girl on the river. "If you saw
her, mother, you would know how I feel. Tall and elegant, with the
clearest of clear, transparent olive complexions, hair as black as jet,
and such grey eyes--bright, mocking, like lights on water at night. It
is all very well to be a bit satirical till you see her. And she dresses
as well as any woman in London. I tell you, your son doesn't half put
his head up when she goes walking down Piccadilly with him."
Mrs. Morel wondered, in her heart, if her son did not go walking down
Piccadilly with an elegant figure and fine clothes, rather than with
a woman who was near to him. But she congratulated him in her doubtful
fashion. And, as she stood over the washing-tub, the mother brooded over
her son. She saw him saddled with an elegant and expensive wife, earning
little money, dragging along and getting draggled in some small, ugly
house in a suburb. "But there," she told herself, "I am very likely
a silly--meeting trouble halfway." Nevertheless, the load of anxiety
scarcely ever left her heart, lest William should do the wrong thing by
himself.
Presently, Paul was bidden call upon Thomas Jordan, Manufacturer of
Surgical Appliances, at 21, Spaniel Row, Nottingham. Mrs. Morel was all
joy.
"There, you see!" she cried, her eyes shining. "You've only written four
letters, and the third is answered. You're lucky, my boy, as I always
said you were."
Paul looked at the picture of a wooden leg, adorned with elastic
stockings and other appliances, that figured on Mr. Jordan's notepaper,
and he felt alarmed. He had not known that elastic stockings existed.
And he seemed to feel the business world, with its regulated system of
values, and its impersonality, and he dreaded it. It seemed monstrous
also that a business could be run on wooden legs.
Mother and son set off together one Tuesday morning. It was August and
blazing hot. Paul walked with something screwed up tight inside him.
He would have suffered much physical pain rather than this unreasonable
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