“I hate philosophy,” remarked Agnes, trying to turn the subject, for she saw that it made Rickie unhappy.
“So do I. But I daren’t say so before Stephen. He despises us women.”
“No, I don’t,” said the victim, swaying to and fro on the window-sill, whither he had retreated.
“Yes, he does. He won’t even trouble to answer us. Stephen! Podge! Answer me. What has happened to the child’s soul?”
He flung open the window and leant from them into the dusk. They heard him mutter something about a bridge.
“What did I tell you? He won’t answer my question.”
The delightful moment was approaching when the boy would lose his temper: she knew it by a certain tremor in his heels.
“There wants a bridge,” he exploded. “A bridge instead of all this rotten talk and the level-crossing. It wouldn’t break you to build a two-arch bridge. Then the child’s soul, as you call it—well, nothing would have happened to the child at all.”
A gust of night air entered, accompanied by rain. The flowers in the vases rustled, and the flame of the lamp shot up and smoked the glass. Slightly irritated, she ordered him to close the window.
XI