‘I’m going to be a dramatist,’ said Paul.
‘A play-actor!’ cried the mother, who was back again.
‘A play-writer,’ Paul corrected. ‘I’ve got the best tutor in the world.’
‘Do you mean to tell me,’ his mother asked, ‘that you think o’ making that a trade for a lifetime?’
‘Why not? asked Pau.
‘Why not, indeed!’ she cried, with an angry click of her knitting-needle. ‘Writing a parcel o’ rubbidge for fools to speak, and other fools to laugh at.’
‘It was Shakespeare’s trade, Mary,’ said Armstrong.
‘It’s a pretty far cry from our Paul to Shakespeare, I reckon,’ said the mother with sudden dryness.
‘I suppose it is,’ said Paul, laughing; ‘but there are degrees in every calling. Wait a bit I don’t mean that you shall be ashamed of me.’
Paul had been away from home for half a year, and absence had altered many things. The High Street of the town had grown mean and sordid to the eye. Shops which had once been palatial had lost all the glamour which childhood had given them and custom had preserved. The dusty, untidy shop at home had shrunk to less than half its original dimensions. Armstrong seemed changed more than anything or anybody else. He looked suddenly small and old and gray. He was not much over five-and-sixty, but he had always seemed old to Paul, even from the earliest recollections of infancy. But his age had been the age of dignity and authority, and now it was age without disguise, white-haired and withered, and bowed in uncomplaining patience.