Sons and Lovers - Daimon Club

slivin', nibblin' little nuisances, for they are."
These happy evenings could not take place unless Morel
had some job to do. And then he always went to bed very early,
often before the children. There was nothing remaining for him
to stay up for, when he had finished tinkering, and had skimmed
the headlines of the newspaper.
And the children felt secure when their father was in bed.
They lay and talked softly a while. Then they started as the lights
went suddenly sprawling over the ceiling from the lamps that swung
in the hands of the colliers tramping by outside, going to take
the nine o'clock shift. They listened to the voices of the men,
imagined them dipping down into the dark valley. Sometimes they
went to the window and watched the three or four lamps growing
tinier and tinier, swaying down the fields in the darkness.
Then it was a joy to rush back to bed and cuddle closely in
the warmth.
Paul was rather a delicate boy, subject to bronchitis.
The others were all quite strong; so this was another reason
for his mother's difference in feeling for him. One day he came
home at dinner-time feeling ill. But it was not a family to make
any fuss.
"What's the matter with YOU?" his mother asked sharply.