“She went out a few minutes ago.”
“Didn't she know the time? She ought to be dressing for dinner. Do you know where she's gone?”
“I think she went down the slonk.”
His children had inherited his straight, sharp features and his small, black, vivid eyes. Their hair was of various hues of black. Maggie's was raven black and glossy; Sally's was coarse and of a hue like black-lead; Grace's was abundant and relieved with sooty shades; Willy's hair was brown. He was the fair one of the family, and his hair was always closely cut in military fashion, and he wore a long flowing military moustache with a tinge of red in it. His father and he were built on the same lines—long, spare bodies, short necks and legs, and short, spare arms, and if the father's white hair were dyed the years that separated him from his son would disappear, for although the son had only just turned thirty, he was middle-aged in face and feeling.
Sally and Grace were both thickly built, the latter a little inclined to fat. Maggie was thin and elegantly angular, and often stood in picturesque attitudes; she stood in one now, with her hands linked behind her back, and she watched her father, and her look was subtle and insinuating.
“When I came here,” he said, speaking rapidly, and as if he were speaking to himself, “the place was well enough; there was nothing but those wretched cottages facing the sea, the green, and a few cottages about it; but since those villas have been put up, Southwick has become unbearable. All my troubles,” he murmured, “originated in the Southdown Road.”
Maggie turned aside, smiled, and bit her lip; she did not speak, however, for she knew her father did not care to be interrupted in his musings.
“A hateful place—glass porticoes, and oleographs on the walls.” Here Mr. Brookes stopped in his walk to admire one of his favourite Friths. “Those ridiculous haberdashers, with a bas-relief of the founder of their house over the doorway. The proprietors of the baths, the Measons, poor as church mice, the son a mate of a merchant vessel—these are not proper associates for my daughters. I will not know them; I will not have them in my house.”
“The Measons are quite as good as we are, father. They may be poor, but as far as family goes—”
“You are just the same as the others, Maggie; once there is a young man to flirt with, you don't care what he is or where he comes from. When there are no young men, you will snub the old ladies fast enough; and as for Sally, she is downright rude. I didn't want to see the haberdashers, but while they were in my house I was polite to them.”