...
"He don't care--he's changed."
And, indeed, this is how it appeared. All through that time he wore an
odd look of excitement, triumph, pleasure, which lifted him away from
himself. There was a sort of lilt in his very step; his eyes shone, his
cheeks were flushed. When he cleared a pile of freshly-ironed, starched
things from the end of a table, so as to spread out a score upon it,
laid them on the floor where the cat padded them over with dirty feet,
and his mother railed at him, as she still did rail--on any subject
apart from this of not caring--he glanced up at her with bright, amused
eyes, his finger still following the black-and-white tangle of notes,
looked at Jenny, and laughed--actually laughed.
"You great oaf!" cried Mrs. Cohen, and could have killed him. Up at
four o'clock next morning, rewashing, starching, ironing, she retched
with sick fatigue and something more--that sense of giddiness, of being
hit on the head which had oppressed her of late. It was as though that
laugh of Ben's had stuck like a bone in her chest, so sharp that she
could scarcely draw breath; driven all the blood to her head.
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