"It was at lunch time."
“Silence, sir. You will have no time for this racketing about the town. There's work always in the garden, but you never seem to recognise it. I'll introduce you to it--"
"But I've got to stay in every afternoon for a fortnight to do sums. That Sister Pawl--"
"Don't speak in that disrespectful tone of Sister Pawl. You must have her nearly in her grave. Only that I promised your mother, I'd take you in to the Brothers in the morning, and I'd tell them to make a man of you-you big lolly! That's all you are. The nuns are too soft with you. So am I. So is your mother. We all treat you as if you were a baby. It's your mother's farlt. I'll take a hand from this out. Home you come every, afternoon as soon as Sister Pawl is finished with yau poor woman, she has my sympathy and you'll work like a-like a--"
My father paused for breath.
"Like a. Greek slave. I'm glad Sister Pawl is going to give you sums every afternoon for a fortnight. I wish-she- had -made -it a. year. Keep you out of mischiff! You young reprobait."
When he was finished and had folded the bill and put it in his pocket, I said very softly:
“Didn't it ever happen to you?"
"What?" he growled.
“You know-twenty-five years ago. You said histry repeats itself in this family, and that all the things that happen to me now happened to you then."
"No," growled my father.
"Are!" I said in a voice of dissapointment.
"It wasn't a Greek; it was an Italian. And it wasn't a fish shop; it was a fruit shop. And I didn't ring a gong; I merely asked him for a yard of tripe and two dozen of sossidids." Something flashed over my father's face something like a light and made it look like a little boy's face for a minute. "He did not chase me round the shop. The door was open. He vorlted over the counter-he was yung and nimbiland chased me down the mane street . A perleeceman saved my life."
"Tell’s more about it," I coaxed.
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