for me to get news o' ye the day that nearly made me spew.' As he continued his tone chilled progressively. 'But in conversation with a member of the Borough Council to-day I was informed that you had been seen in Church Street in conversation with a young gentleman, a very pretty young gentleman.' He showed his teeth at her and continued cuttingly, 'Who I believe is a low, suspicious character, a worthless scamp.'
In a voice that was almost a wail, Mrs. Brodie feebly interposed:
'No! no! Mary! It wasn't you, a respectable girl like you. Tell your father it wasn't you.'
Nessie, relieved to be removed from the centre of attention, exclaimed unthinkingly:
'Oh! Mary, was it Denis Foyle?'
Mary sat motionless, her glance fixed upon her plate, a curious pallor around her lips; then, as a lump rose in her throat, she swallowed hard, and an unconscious force drove her to say in a low firm voice:
'He's not a worthless scamp.'
'What!' roared Brodie. 'You're speaking back to your own father next and for a low-down Irish blackguard! A blackthorn boy! No! Let these paddies come over from their bogs to dig our potatoes for us but let it end at that. Don't let them get uppish. Old Foyle may be the smartest publican in Darroch, but that doesn't make his son a gentleman.'
Mary felt her limbs shake even as she sat. Her lips were stiff and dry, nevertheless she felt compelled to say, although she had never before dared argue with her father:
'Denis has got his own business, Father. He won't have anything to do with the spirit trade. He's with Findlay and Company of Glasgow. They're big tea importers and have nothing at all to do with with the other business.'
'Indeed, now,' he sneered at her, leading her on. 'That's grand news. Have ye anything more ye would like to say to testify to the noble character of the gentleman. He doesna sell whisky now. It's tea apparently. Whatna godly occupation for the son of a publican! Well, what next?'
She knew that he was taunting her, yet was constrained to say, appeasingly:
'He's not just an ordinary clerk, Father. He's well thought of by the firm. He goes around the country on business for them every now and then. He he hoped he might get on might even buy a partnership later.'
'Ye don't say,' he snarled at her. 'Is that the sort of nonsense he's been filling up your silly head wi' not an ordinary clerk just a common commercial traveller is that it? Has he not told ye he'll be Lord Mayor o' London next? It's j ust about as likely! The young pup!'
With tears streaming down her cheeks Mary again interposed, despite a wail of protest from Mamma.
'He's well liked, Father! Indeed he is! Mr. Findlay takes an interest in him. I know that.'
'Pah! Ye don't expect me to believe what he tells ye. It's a pack of lies, a pack of lies,' he shouted again, raising his voice at her. 'He's a low-down scum. What can ye expect from that kind of stock? Just rottenness. It's an outrage on me that ye ever spoke to him. But ye've spoken to him for the last time.' He glared at her compellingly, as he repeated fiercely, 'No! Ye'll never speak to him again. I forbid it.'
'But, Father,' she sobbed, 'oh! Father, I - I '
'Mary, Mary, don't dare answer your father back! It's dreadful to hear you speak up to him like that,' came Mamma's voice from the other end of the table. But although its purpose was to propitiate, her interjection was on this occasion a tactical error and served only to direct momentarily the tyranny of Brodie's wrath upon her own bowed head, and with a jerk of his eyes he flared at her:
'What are you yammerin' about? Are you talkin' or am I? If ye've something to say then we'll all stop and listen to the wonder o' it, but if ye've nothing to say, then keep your mouth shut and don't interrupt. You're as bad as she is. It's your place to watch the company she keeps.' He snorted and, after his habit, paused forcibly, making the stillness oppressive, until the old grandmother, who had not followed the trend of the talk or grasped the significance of the intermission, but who sensed that Mary was in disgrace, al-
lowed the culmination of her own feelings to overcome her, and punctuated the silence by suddenly calling out, in a rancorous senile tone:
'She forgot her messages the day, James. Mary forgot my cheese, the heedless thing she is;' then, her ridiculous spleen vented, she immediately subsided, muttering, her head shaking as with a palsy.
He disregarded the interruption entirely and returning his eyes to Mary, slowly repeated:
'I have spoken. If you dare to disobey me, God help you! And one more point. This is the first night of Levenford Fair. I saw the start o' the stinking geggies on my way home. Remember! No child of mine goes within a hundred yards of that show ground. Let the rest of the town go; let the riff-raff of the countryside go; let all the Foyles and their friends go; but not one of James Brodie's family will so demean themselves. I forbid it.'
His last words were heavy with menace as he pushed back his chair, heaved up his huge bulk and stood for an instant upright, dominating the small feeble group beneath him. Then he strode to his armchair in the corner and sat down, swept his adjacent piperack with the automatic action of established habit, selected a pipe by sense of touch alone, withdrew it and, taking a square leather tobacco pouch from his deep side pocket, opened the clasp and slowly filled the charred bowl; then he lifted a paper spill from the heap below the rack, bent heavily forward, ignited the spill at the fire and lit his pipe. Having accomplished the sequence of actions without once having removed his threatening eyes from the silent group at table, he smoked slowly, with a wet, protruding underlip, still watching the others, but now more contemplatively, more with that air of calm, judicial supremacy. Although they were accustomed to it, his family inevitably became depressed under the tyranny of this cold stare, and now they conversed in low tones; Mamma's colour was still high; Mary's lips still trembled as she spoke; Nessie fiddled with her teaspoon, dropped it, then blushed shamefully as though discovered in a wicked act; the old woman alone sat impassive, pervaded by the comfortable sense of her repletion.
At this moment there were sounds of some one entering the house, and presently a young man came into the room. He was a slender youth of twenty-four, pale-faced and with a regrettable tendency towards acne, his look slightly hangdog and indirect, his dress as foppish as his purse and his fear of his father would allow, his hands, particularly noticeable, being large, soft, dead white in colour, with the nails cut short to the quick, leaving smooth round pads of flesh at the finger ends. He sidled into a chair without appearing to regard
any one in the room, accepted silently a cup of tea which Mamma handed him and began to eat. This, the last member of the household, was Matthew, sole son and, therefore, heir to James Brodic. He was permissibly late for this meal because, being employed as a clerk in the ship stores department in Latta's Shipyard, his hours of work did not cease until six o'clock.
'Is your tea right. Matt?' asked his mother solicitously, in a low voice.
Matthew permitted himself to nod silently.
'Have some of that apple jelly, dear. It's real nice,' begged Mamma in an undertone. 'You're lookin' a bit tired the night. Have ye had a lot to do in the office to-day?'
He jerked his head noncommittally whilst his pale, bloodless hands moved continuously, cutting his bread into small accurate squares, stirring the tea, drumming upon the tablecloth; he never allowed them to be still, moving them amongst the equipage of the table like an acolyte performing some hasty sacramental rite upon an altar. The downcast look, the bolted mouthfuls, this uneasy inquietude of his hands were the reactions upon his unstable nerves of that morose paternal eye brooding behind his back.
'More tea, son?' whispered his mother, stretching out her hand for his cup. 'Try these water biscuits too, they're new in to-day;' then adding, as a sudden thought struck her, 'Has your indigestion bothered you to-day?'
'Not too bad,' at last he murmured in reply, without looking up.
'Eat your tea slowly then, Matt,' cautioned Mamma confidently. 'I sometimes think ye don't chew your food enough. Don't hurry!'
'Got to see Agnes to-night, though, Mamma,' he whispered reprovingly, as though justifying his haste.
She moved her head in a slow, acquiescent comprehension.
Presently the old grandmother arose, sucking her teeth and brushing the crumbs from her lap, wondering, as she took her chair, if her son would talk to her to-night. When in the humour he would regale her with the choicer gossip of the town, shouting to her of how he had got the better of Waddel and taken him down a peg, how Provost Gordon had slapped him heartily upon the back at the Cross, how Paxton's business was going down the hill. No one was ever praised in these conversations, but they were delicious to her in their disparaging piquancy, toothsome in their sarcastic aspersion, and she enjoyed them immensely, fastening upon each morsel of personal information and
