Sorrell and Son

Sorrell was trying to fasten the straps of the little brown
portmanteau, but since the portmanteau was old and also very full,
he had to deal with it tenderly.

"Come and sit on this thing, Kit."

The boy had been straddling a chair by the window, his interest
divided between his father's operations upon the portmanteau and a
game of football that was being played in Lavender Street by a
number of very dirty and very noisy small boys.

Christopher went and sat. He was a brown child of eleven, with a
grave face and a sudden pleasant smile. His bent knees showed the
shininess of his trousers.

"Have to be careful, you know," said Sorrell.

The father's dark head was close to the boy's brown one. He too
was shiny in a suit of blue serge. His long figure seemed to curve
over the portmanteau with anxiously rounded shoulders and sallow
and intent face. The child beside him made him look dusty and
frail.

"Now, the other one, old chap. Can't afford to be rough. Gently
does it."

He was a little out of breath, and he talked in short jerky
sentences as he pulled carefully at the straps. A broken strap
would be a disaster, for the clasp of the lock did not function,
and this dread of a trivial disaster seemed to show in the
carefulness of the man's long and intelligent hands. They were
cautious yet flurried. His breathing was audible in the room.

"That's it."

The words expressed relief. He was kneeling, and as he looked up
towards the window and saw the strip of sky and the grimy cornice
of grey slates of the house across the way, his poise suggested the
crouch of a creature escaping from under some huge upraised foot.
For the last three years, ever since his demobilization, life had
been to Sorrell like some huge trampling beast, and he--a furtive
thing down in the mud, panting, dodging, bewildered, resentful and
afraid. Now he had succeeded in strapping that portmanteau. They
were slipping away from under the shadow of the great beast.
Something had turned up to help the man to save his last made-to-
measure suit, his boy, and the remnant of his gentility.

Horrible word! He stroked his little black moustache, and
considered the portmanteau.

"Well,--that's that, son."

He smiled faintly, and Kit's more radiant smile broke out in
response. To the boy the leaving of this beastly room in a beastly
street was a glorious adventure, for they were going into the
country.

"It will want a label, pater."

Sorrell and Son