Nobody save he, at Sea Gull Manor, cared for a
grate fire; or if mother would have liked one, instead of a
handwrought bronze radiator half hidden in the wall, she dared not say
so. But she came and sat in Petro's den sometimes, crocheting in the
old easy chair, when he was self indulgent enough to have a fire of
ships' logs. The rose and gold and violet flames of the driftwood lit
up for him the secret way to Dreamland and the country of Romance.
What it did for mother, she did not say; but as her fingers moved,
regularly as the ticking of a clock, her eyes would wander over the
old furniture she had loved and back to the fire, as if she were
trying to call up her own past and her son's future.
This morning Petro was not in a good mood, for he had been reading in
the newspaper an interview with him which he hadn't given. It was all
about the "Start in Life Fund," and sounded as if he were boasting,
not only of the idea, but of the way in which he meant to carry it
out. Nobody likes to be made to appear a conceited bounder when his
intentions are as modest as those of a hermit crab, and a hundred
times more benevolent.
Therefore, when Ena came, using as an excuse a dire need of notepaper,
and stopped to dawdle, lighting one of his cigarettes, Petro felt an
urgent desire to be cross.
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