Gummidge think of him, eh?"
I knew she was jeering at him, but her face was adamant against the
least flicker of sarcasm or facetiousness. I gazed fixedly at a
blushing crescent of lobster.
"I think you're eighth, aren't you, Seaton?"
Seaton moved his small pupils towards his aunt. But she continued to
gaze with a kind of concentrated detachment at me.
"Arthur will never make a brilliant scholar, I fear," she said, lifting
a dexterously-burdened fork to her wide mouth....
After luncheon she preceded me up to my bedroom. It was a jolly little
bedroom, with a brass fender and rugs and a polished floor, on which it
was possible, I afterwards found, to play "snow-shoes." Over the
washstand was a little black-framed water-colour drawing, depicting a
large eye with an extremely fishlike intensity in the spark of light on
the dark pupil; and in "illuminated" lettering beneath was printed very
minutely, "Thou God Seest ME," followed by a long looped monogram,
"S.S.," in the corner. The other pictures were all of the sea: brigs on
blue water; a schooner overtopping chalk cliffs; a rocky island of
prodigious steepness, with two tiny sailors dragging a monstrous boat
up a shelf of beach.
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