Sons and Lovers - Daimon Club

"Oh, my sirs!" he said. "Wheer's my towel?"
It was hung on a chair to warm before the fire, otherwise he
would have bullied and blustered. He squatted on his heels before
the hot baking-fire to dry himself.
"F-ff-f!" he went, pretending to shudder with cold.
"Goodness, man, don't be such a kid!" said Mrs. Morel.
"It's NOT cold."
"Thee strip thysen stark nak'd to wesh thy flesh i' that scullery,"
said the miner, as he rubbed his hair; "nowt b'r a ice-'ouse!"
"And I shouldn't make that fuss," replied his wife.
"No, tha'd drop down stiff, as dead as a door-knob, wi'
thy nesh sides."
"Why is a door-knob deader than anything else?" asked Paul, curious.
"Eh, I dunno; that's what they say," replied his father.
"But there's that much draught i' yon scullery, as it blows through
your ribs like through a five-barred gate."
"It would have some difficulty in blowing through yours,"
said Mrs. Morel.
Morel looked down ruefully at his sides.
"Me!" he exclaimed. "I'm nowt b'r a skinned rabbit.
My bones fair juts out on me."
"I should like to know where," retorted his wife.
"Iv'ry-wheer! I'm nobbut a sack o' faggots."
Mrs. Morel laughed. He had still a wonderfully young body,
muscular, without any fat. His skin was smooth and clear.
It might have been the body of a man of twenty-eight, except that
there were, perhaps, too many blue scars, like tattoo-marks, where the
coal-dust remained under the skin, and that his chest was too hairy.
But he put his hand on his side ruefully. It was his fixed belief that,
because be did not get fat, he was as thin as a starved rat.
Paul looked at his father's thick, brownish hands all scarred,
with broken nails, rubbing the fine smoothness of his sides, and the