“Isn’t George coming in?”
“He’s married.”
“The devil he is! And am I a grandfather? Lord! what a world it is for breeding! Think of me just fifty and a grandfather. What things do happen to a man, to be sure.”
“If only you wouldn’t talk,” protested René in a sudden exasperation.
“To be sure,” returned his father genially. “I’m the prodigal. Must give you time to take me in while we digest the fatted calf.”
“It’s not that!” René was swept by his indignation on to his feet. “It isn’t that! Only I never thought of this. You come in, and you sit there in your old chair as though you’d only gone out yesterday. And it’s over ten years, and I can hardly remember you, and I know all the time that you’re my father, and—and—I don’t know you. It’s simply beastly. I don’t know why it is, but it is.”
“René! René!” cried his mother.
“Steady, old girl,” said Mr. Fourmy, with an almost tender firmness. He turned quietly round in his chair until he was looking sideways up at René. “Look here, young man, it takes two to make a scene, and I won’t have it. It’s no good trying to make a scene simply because you expected to have one if ever I came back. I spanked you the day before I left for throwing a knife at your brother in one of your baresark fits, and for two pins I’d turn you up and spank you now.”
Then René’s memory played him a scurvy trick. “Boot or brush?” he asked himself, and a sick anger rose in him and hot tears welled into his eyes. He gasped and gurgled inarticulately, thinking he was making an appeal to his mother, but through his tears he seemed to see his father growing larger and larger, and in a gust of terror he lunged out of the room, seized his cap, and rushed from the house.
“It isn’t fair! it isn’t fair!” he moaned.