'I would for this once he or any were big enough to break your head for you as well as you deserve,' said Giles savagely.
'We're of a mind there,' said Christian, meekly and soberly.
Giles perversely took this as a scoff, and fumed.
'Here has the wife been in a taking along of you; never saying a word, going about like a stiff statue, with a face to turn a body against his victuals; and I saying where was the sense? had you never before been gone over a four-and-twenty hours? And now to fix her, clean without a cause, you bring back a hole to have let in Judgment-day. Now will come moils to drive a man daft.
'And to round off, by what I hear down yonder, never a civil answer but a broken head is all you'll give. "Look you there now," says Philip, and I heard him, and he has a hand clapped to his crown, and he points at your other piece of work, and he says, says Philip: "Look you there now, he was never born to drown," and he laughs in his way. Well, I thought he was not far out, take it either way, when I see how you have brought the poor thing in mishandled. It passes me how you kept her afloat and brought her through. Let's hear.'
Though Giles might rate, there was never a rub. Years before the old man and the boy had come to a footing strangely fraternal, set there by a common despair of satisfying the strict code of Lois.
Again Christian shook his head. Giles reached up a kindly hand to his shoulder.
'What's amiss, boy? It's new for you to show a cross grain. A poor spirit it is that can't take blame that is due.'
Christian laughed, angry and sore.
'O Dad!' he said, 'I must blame myself most of all. Have your say. Give me a taste of the sort of stuff I may have to swallow. But ask nothing.'