It was a piece of impertinence to call him "Steve," of course, and when
other people were there it was "Mr. Brant," but in their own privacy it was
their own affair. Peter slipped down from his chair, and Stephen sat down
on it, and then Peter was lifted up and leant his head back somewhere
against the middle button of Stephen's waistcoat, just where his heart was
noisiest, and he could feel the hard outline of Stephen's enormous silver
watch that his family had had, so Stephen said, for a hundred years. Now
was the blissful time, the perfect moment. The rest of the world was busied
with life--the window showed the dull and then suddenly shining flakes of
snow, the lights and the limitless sea--the room showed the sanded floor,
the crowd of fishermen drinking, their feet moving already to the tune
of the fiddle, the fisher girls with their coloured shawls, the great,
swinging smoky lamp, the huge fire, Dicky the fool, Mother Figgis, fat Sam
the host, old Frosted Moses ... the gay romantic world--and these two
in their corner, and Peter so happy that no beatings in the world could
terrify.

"But, boy," says Stephen, bending down so that the end of his beard tickles
Peter's neck, "what are yer doing here so late? Your father ...?"

"I'm going back to be beaten, of course."

"If yer go now perhaps yer won't be beaten so bad?"

"Oh, Steve! ... I'm staying ... like this ... always."

But Peter knew, in spite of the way that the big brown hand pressed his
white one in sympathy, that Stephen was worried and that he was thinking
of something. He knew, although he could not see, that Stephen's eyes were