"Yes," said his father. "He's got a garage of his own now. He's getting on."
"Shall I go and see him?" asked Ernie.
"There's nothing to see," his father answered in that new dry note of his. "But you'd better go and see it perhaps," he added.
Ernie rose reluctantly and went into the passage. Alf's voice came from the kitchen, dogmatic and domineering.
"Him or me. That's flat," he was saying. "House won't hold us both."
Ernie swaggered into the kitchen.
Alf was standing before the fire, very smart and well-groomed. He wore a double-breasted waistcoat, festooned by a watch-chain, from which hung a bronze cross. A little man still, with an immense head, his shoulders appeared broad in their padded coat; but the creases in his waistcoat betrayed his hollow chest and defective physique, and his legs were small and almost shrunken in their last year's Sunday trousers.
Ernie advanced on his brother.
"All right, Alf, old son," he said. "No need to get yer shirt out. I'm not a-goin to force myself on no one."
"Al-fred, if you please," answered Alf, planted before the fire and caressing a little waxed moustache, which had come into being during Ernie's absence.