Somers sat down, only anxious to behave himself.
“Harriet sent you such a silly present,” he said. “Just shells we have picked up from the shore. She thought you might like to play with them on the counterpane—”
“Like that sloppy Coventry Patmore poem. Let me look.”
The sick man took the little Sorrento box with its inlaid design of sirens and peered in at the shells.
“I can smell the sea in them,” he said hoarsely.
And very slowly he began to look at the shells, one by one. There were black ones like buds of coal, and black ones with a white spiral thread, and funny knobbly black and white ones, and tiny purple ones, and a bright sea-orange, semi-transparent clamp shell, and little pink ones with long, sharp points, and glass ones, and lovely pearly ones, and then those that Richard had put in, worn shells like sea-ivory, marvellous substance, with all the structure showing; spirals like fairy stair-cases, and long, pure phallic pieces that were the centres of big shells, from which the whorl was all washed away: also curious flat, oval discs, with a lovely whorl traced on them, and an eye in the centre. Richard liked these especially.
Kangaroo looked at them briefly, one by one, as if they were bits of uninteresting printed paper.
“Here, take them away,” he said, pushing the box aside. And his face had a faint spot of pink in the cheeks.
“They may amuse you some time when you are alone,” said Richard, apologetically.
“They make me know I have never been born,” said Kangaroo, huskily.