One of these days he'll be proposing to me." She
couldn't have written like that, could she?'
I laughed. I could not help it.
'Shake hands,' I said warmly. 'I'm delighted.'
And soon afterwards my mother sidled in, shyly.
'The lad's delighted, Sarah,' said Mr Nixon shortly.
I said nothing about my own engagement that night. I had never
thought of my mother as a woman with a future, I had never
realized that she was desirable, and that a man might desire her,
and that her lonely existence in that house was not all that she
had the right to demand from life. And I was ashamed of my
characteristic filial selfish egoism. So I decided that I would
not intrude my joys on hers until the next morning. We live and
learn.
BEGINNING THE NEW YEAR
I
We are a stolid and a taciturn race, we of the Five Towns. It may
be because we are geographically so self contained; or it may be
because we work in clay and iron; or it may merely be because it
is our nature to be stolid and taciturn. But stolid and taciturn
we are; and some of the instances of our stolidity and our
taciturnity are enough to astound. They do not, of course, astound
us natives; we laugh at them, we think they are an immense joke,
and what the outer world may think does not trouble our deep
conceit of ourselves.
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