would go about whistling some gay tune, or you caught him stroking his
moustache and parting it over his rich lips that smiled as if he were
thinking of what Mamma had done to make him happy. The red specks and
smears had gone from his eyes, they were clear and blue, and they looked
at you with a kind, gentle look, like Uncle Victor's. His very beard was
happy.

"You may not know it, but your father is the handsomest man in Essex,"
Mamma said.

Perhaps it wasn't anything that Mamma had done. Perhaps he was only happy
because he was being good. Every Sunday he went to church at Barkingside
with Mamma, kneeling close to her in the big pew and praying in a great,
ghostly voice, "Good Lord, deliver us!" When the psalms and hymns began
he rose over the pew-ledge, yards and yards of him, as if he stood on
many hassocks, and he lifted up his beard and sang. All these times the
air fairly tingled with him; he seemed to beat out of himself and spread
around him the throb of violent and overpowering life. And in the
evenings towards sunset they walked together in the fields, and Mary
followed them, lagging behind in the borders where the sharlock and wild
rye and poppies grew. When she caught up with them she heard them
talking.

Once Mamma said, "Why can't you always be like this, Emilius?"

And Papa said, "Why, indeed!"

And when Christmas came and Mark and Dan were back again he was as cruel
and teasing as he had ever been.