"Thanking me for a quiet nap and a saucer
of milk, eh? You loafer! What do I keep you for? You gorge the bread
and meat I earn by sweating and freezing, and you keep your sluggish
mountain of bones covered. A year or two ago I'd have urged you along
with a stick. I used to get some work out of you then. But you think
you're too big for that, now, don't you? You fancy I'm afraid of your
bigness, eh? Well, do you want me to try it out? What about it?"
During the first part of his brother's speech, Pete had faced him,
but in the middle he had turned his back and stood in front of one
of the clumsy windows. He looked out now at a white wall of snow,
above which shone the dazzle of the midday. He whistled very softly
to himself and sank his hands deep into the pockets of his corduroys.
He did not answer the snarling question, but his wide, quiet mouth,
exquisitely shaped, ran into a smile and a dimple, deep and narrow,
cut into his thin and ruddy cheek.
Between the woman, who went on with her work as though no one had
come into the room, and the silent smiling youth, Hugh Garth prowled
the floor like a shadow thrown by a moving light.
He was a man of forty-five, gray-haired, misshapen, heavy above the
waist and light to meanness below; a man lame in one leg and with
an ill-proportioned face, malicious, lined, lead-colored; a man who
limped and leaped about the room with a fierce energy, the while his
tongue, gifted with a rich and resonant voice, poured vitriol upon
the silence.
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