“Does it show much?” asked Dominic, fingering it rather anxiously.
“Going to be a beauty. Somebody else licked you, evidently, besides old Wedderburn.”
“He didn’t!” said Dominic indignantly. “You just ought to see him, that’s all. I bet he’ll have more than just a black eye to show by tomorrow.” The gleam came back to his eyes readily, brightening them to the color of home- made marmalade. He pushed his chair back from the table to balance it on its two back legs, and wound his own long, flanneled shanks bewilderingly about the front ones, braced on his taut brown arms, suddenly grinning, suddenly gloating, the little devil, about as subdued as a cock robin in the nesting season. Four feet seven of indiarubber and whalebone, with a shock head of dark chestnut hair growing in all directions, and a freckled nose, and an obstinate mouth; a good deal like his mother, only Bunty’s hair was frankly red, and her skin fair and clear of freckles. George’s resolution to be properly paternal, and read the appropriate lecture, went by the board, as it usually did. After all, he spent all his days being serious, even portentous, about minor crimes, he couldn’t quite keep it up after hours with his own boy; and he was well aware in his own heart, though he never admitted it, that while he was more ready to threaten, it was usually Bunty who performed. She had a way of advancing with perfect calm and patience to the limit of what she would stand, and then, only occasionally and with devastating effect, falling on her startled son like a thunderstorm. And George’s conscience, aware of shortcomings, impelled him sometimes to express concern ahead of her, so that he might at least appear to be the seat of authority in the house. She never snubbed him, she only smiled, and said with suspicious sweetness: “Yes, darling, you’re perfectly right!”
Tonight, when he followed her into the scullery and took the teacloth out of her hand, she turned and gave him the too demure smile which made him feel about Dominic’s age; and with a very natural reaction he resolved to be his full thirty-nine years, and be damned to her.
“Our Dom’s been in trouble at school,” he said with gravity.
“So was his father before him,” said Bunty, “many a time. It didn’t make the slightest impression on him, either. Dom’s all right, don’t you worry.” Aunt Nora and John were already down the road and waiting for the bus back to Comerbourne Bridge, and Bunty could laugh at both George and Dominic if she pleased, without hurting either of them. She patted his cheek disconcertingly with her wet hand, and snatched a cup from him just in time to prevent him from dropping it. “You’re so like him, it just isn’t true.”
George took exception to this. “He’s the spitting image of you, and you know it. Try and make him go the way he doesn’t want, and see how far you get with it. But he is a little devil!” He recaptured the paternal frown with some difficulty, for heavier things than Dominic had been on his mind all day, and this was by way of self-indulgence at the end of the common task. Sometimes he thought: “Why did I ever go into this police business, anyway?”
“What was it this time?” asked Bunty serenely.
“He fell foul of Chad Wedderburn over scrapping with some other kid. Seems there are some things that get Chad’s goat, after all. They had to hunt for a long time before they found one of ’em—it took Dom to do it!—but he’s managed it this time. A queer lad,” said George thoughtfully. “Chad, I mean. Would you suppose that his particular red rag would be fighting?”
“I can conceive it,” said Bunty, rinsing the sink. “Hasn’t he had about enough of it to last him a lifetime?”
“That isn’t really any reason, though, why he should grudge our Dom his bash.”
“It’s on the right side, anyhow,” she said comfortably. “Not that Dom usually goes hunting for that particular kind of trouble, to do the little tyke justice. You didn’t ask him anything about it, did you?” A hazel eye very like Dominic’s regarded him sidelong for a flash, and appeared satisfied with his indignant stare; off duty she found little difference between her husband and her son. “Sorry, darling! Of course you didn’t. Neither did I. He looked so on his dignity, I didn’t dare. But he won,” she said positively, “it was sticking out all over him.”
“I wish some of his elders had learned enough sense to quit scrapping,” said George. “Win or lose, it’s a mug’s game, but there are always more mugs than plenty.” He hung up the towel neatly and rolled his shirtsleeves down. “Dealing with kids must be money for jam compared with our job.”
“The child,” murmured Bunty, “is father to the man. I don’t suppose there’s much to choose. Had a bad sort of day, then?”
“Not exactly—just ominous.” He liked to talk to her about his job, at night, when he could kick it out of his mind for a short time if he wished, and therefore with human perversity ceased to wish it. Closer than his skin was Bunty, the partner of partners, and often she could help him to see a little more daylight through the opaque human creatures who vexed and made interesting his days. “I wouldn’t care to say that our D.P.s are any less honest by nature than we are, but their dependent circumstances, or all they’ve been through, or something, has certainly given some of ’em the idea that they’re entitled to be carried for the rest of their days.
“Cheer up,” said Bunty helpfully, “the knives haven’t been out for three nights, not even at turning-out time.”
“Knock on wood when you say things like that, just to please me. Still, the land’s awake, all right, maybe we’ve got to thank the visitors for that. And I suppose they have had the rough end of it for some years, poor devils—but what we’ll stand from somebody who couldn’t get on with his own country—or hasn’t risked trying it—is nobody’s business. Mind you,” said George scrupulously, “there are some fine chaps among ’em, too. They’re the ones I’m sorry for. There may be some place in the world where they belong, but it certainly isn’t among their fellow-exiles here in Comerford.”
“A man without any national roots,” said Bunty gravely, “is the last person to make a good adopted child in another country.”
“That’s the hell of it. The last person to make any kind of internationalist, either. But we’ve got ’em, and we’ve got to try and digest ’em.”
It was almost invariably at this hour in the evening, when slippers, and pipe, and a drowsy evening with the wireless floated comfortably in George’s mind’s eye, that the office telephone rang. It did so now, and Dominic, already on the doorstep with trunks and towel rolled under his arm, shrieked back unnecessarily to inform them of the call, and ask if he should answer it. Either way he was content; he wanted to go and fetch Pussy out from her tiresome music lesson and go swimming in the pool of the Comer, but it would also be gratifying to listen in to the beginning, at least, of some interesting incident. However, he departed blithely when George came out to the office himself, for trouble would keep, and the golden July evening would not.
“Hell!” said George, reaching for the receiver. “This is what comes of drawing fate’s attention to— Hullo, yes! Felse here!” Bunty saw the official tension settle upon his face, and heaved a resigned sigh. When he hung up she
