Faster! Faster! by E. M. Delafield Read Free Book Online

your handkerchiefs, Syl? I haven’t one left.”
    â€œYes. Take one. Do I look all right?”
    â€œYou look rather nice. I like you with masses of lip-stick on. I hope Daddy’ll be late; we can have the wireless on till he comes.”
(3)
    Maurice had already turned on the wireless. His evening toilet had been shorn of everything that he could possibly omit without attractingattention to the omission. He had rushed downstairs early in order to obtain possession of the newspaper. Only two came regularly to the house, and of these his father had one in the workshop.
    The other, Maurice knew, would contain a full report of the summing-up in a revolting and notorious murder case. He was extremely anxious to read it.
    â€œDuring the last generation or two,” roared a voice—for Maurice had wholly neglected the recommendations of the little book of instructions that lay on the radio regarding Peaceful Tuning— “during the last generation or two there has developed a school of composers and executive artists of great individuality——”
    The voice roared on, and Maurice, impervious to its eloquence, devoured in compressed form the life-story of a young cinematograph-operator who had first shot, and then partially burned, an elderly prostitute by whom he had been kept. He had just reached the jury’s verdict of Guilty when the door opened.
    Maurice, drawing a deep breath as he relaxed, stood up politely.
    It was Sal Oliver.
    â€œAre you listening to that?” she enquired; obliged to raise her voice in order to be heard.
    â€œOh no,” said Maurice in surprise.
    He abruptly silenced the informant.
    â€œWhy do you have it on, when you don’t even listen?” Sal asked with friendly curiosity.
    Maurice considered. He was a little boy who seldom spoke at random.
    â€œI think the noise helps me to think,” he said at last. “Some people at school have the gramophone on when they’re supposed to be studying. They say it’s a help.”
    â€œIn my day it used to be just the other way round. It was supposed to be much more difficult to concentrate when there was a noise going on.”
    â€œThat’s what Grandmother always says. But Mother doesn’t. She can always concentrate, however much noise is going on. She doesn’t mind being interrupted, whether she’s writing or anything. She says it’s only a matter of making up your mind to attend to what you’re doing.”
    â€œI see,” said Sal.
    â€œI made up my mind when I was quite young,” Maurice said gravely, “to try and be like her. As far as I
could,
I mean,” he added rather apologetically, feeling that such an aspiration might well sound slightly presumptuous.
    His admiration for his mother was enormous, and he saw no reason to suppose that he would ever be hard-working and brilliant, as she was. He knew himself, on the contrary, to be very slow.
    But at least he could learn to concentrate, and the people at school always said that was half the battle. Then he might get a scholarship, and it wouldn’t be so frightfully expensive for Mother, and she wouldn’t have to work so hard all the time.
    As he thought of it all, his small freckled face grew graver and graver and he unconsciously breathed a deep sigh.
    Sal Oliver, looking at him, suddenly asked for a cigarette. “And please light it and
start
it for me,Maurice,” she said in a quick, conspiratorial whisper.
    Very occasionally Sal would invite him to a couple of illicit puffs.
    Maurice flew joyfully to the cigarette-box.
(4)
    Taffy had put on the apple-green frock from motives that were obscure to herself.
    It was a very old frock indeed, descended to her from Sylvia—and Sylvia had worn it while she was still at school. It had shrunk badly in its last cleaning, and was now much too short. The sleeves were too tight.
    And apple-green wasn’t Taffy’s colour.
    Her