“What does that mean?” I said.
“It means that whatever you put on, you will never be anything but a most ordinary-looking person. Now, does that content you?”
“Better than flattering words which are false,” I said stoutly.
They had conducted me home. I was dead-tired and very hungry. My hands were full of parcels. I rushed impetuously into the house. It was time for lunch; the morning had flown with marvellous swiftness. Nay, more; I was late for lunch. Father was standing alone in the dining-room. Marriage had wrought very little perceptible alteration in him. It is true he always now wore a perfectly clean collar, and his coats were always well brushed, but each one seemed to hang upon him in just its old, loose, aggravating fashion, being worn very high up on the nape of the neck, which gave his back a sort of bowed appearance; and his collars, however neat when he put them on in the morning, managed to get finely rumpled before school-hours were over. This was from a habit he had of clutching his collar fiercely when in the heat of argument. There was no laundress in the whole of London who could have made collars stiff enough to withstand father’s clutch. But even Mrs Grant could not persuade him to put on a clean one to go back to afternoon school, nor could she get him to visit the barber as often as she wished. Therefore, on the whole, father looked much as he had always done. But perhaps he would not have been respected or loved as he was loved and respected if even his outward appearance had been changed. He was in a deep brown study now. He hardly saw me as I rushed into the room. I went up to him and took both his hands, and said, “Thank you—thank you so much!”
“What in the world are you thanking me about, Dumps?” he said.
He seemed to wake with a start.
“Where have you been? What is the matter? Don’t litter the place, please; your step-mother doesn’t like it.”
He observed the brown-paper parcels.
“They’re presents,” I said. “Don’t speak about them.”