But he was always shy in the presence of
strangers, and he felt that he did not know this woman who wept and
this man who did not laugh. His father was his play-friend, the
sharer of all his fun; his mother was a quiet woman who sat and
sewed, and sometimes told them not to be silly, which was the best
joke of all. It was not right for people to alter. But the thought of
his bedroom made him desolate, and at last he plucked up his courage,
and crept downstairs on bare feet. Father and mother had gone back
into the kitchen, and he peeped through the crack of the door to see
what they were doing. Mother was still crying, always crying, but he
had to change his position before he could see father. Then he turned
on his heels and ran upstairs trembling with fear and disgust. For
father, the man of all the jokes, the man of whom burglars were
afraid and compared with whom all other little boys' fathers were as
dirt, was crying like a little girl.
He jumped into bed and pulled the bedclothes over his face to shut
out the ugliness of the world.
III
When Jack woke up the next morning he found that the room was full of
sunshine, and that father was standing at the end of the bed. The
moment Jack opened his eyes, he began telling him something in a
serious voice, which was alone sufficient to prevent Jack from
understanding what he said. Besides, he used a lot of long words, and
Jack thought that it was silly to use long words before breakfast,
when nobody could be expected to remember what they meant.
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