When you come to men who are brutes, there is much in common
between the Portuguese and the English variety, Doll. Trust my
knowledge of human nature. (He resumes his position on the hearthrug
with an elderly and responsible air.)
GLORIA (with angered remorse). I don't think we shall ever play
again at our old game of guessing what our father was to be like.
Dolly: are you sorry for your father---the father with lots of money?
DOLLY. Oh, come! What about your father---the lonely old man with
the tender aching heart? He's pretty well burst up, I think.
PHILIP. There can be no doubt that the governor is an exploded
superstition. (Valentine is heard talking to somebody outside the
door.) But hark: he comes.
GLORIA (nervously). Who?
DOLLY. Chalkstones.
PHILIP. Sh! Attention. (They put on their best manners. Philip
adds in a lower voice to Gloria) If he's good enough for the lunch,
I'll nod to Dolly; and if she nods to you, invite him straight away.
(Valentine comes back with his landlord. Mr. Fergus Crampton is a
man of about sixty, tall, hard and stringy, with an atrociously
obstinate, ill tempered, grasping mouth, and a querulously dogmatic
voice. Withal he is highly nervous and sensitive, judging by his thin
transparent skin marked with multitudinous lines, and his slender
fingers.
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