Читать книгу Roper's Row - Warwick Deeping - Страница 16
II
ОглавлениеBut from her window on a hot August evening, when the very walls of Roper’s Row seemed to perspire, she saw Christopher, and a certain incident in which Christopher involved himself. There was a little hunch-backed child in the Row, the small son of a Cornish woman who kept a sweet shop, one of those children with a long, large head that looked too big for its stalk of a neck. The children of Roper’s Row had made a victim of little Pengelly, and combined to persecute him until he flew into one of his funny and futile rages.
“Blub, Softie, blub——”
A truculent young round-head, rapping little Pengelly’s face with his red knuckles, urged him from futile fury to tears, while the rest of the little mob gathered round and gloated.
“ ’E’s blubbin.”
“Where’s your mother, Softie?”
Into the group limped Christopher. He did not distribute cuttings or scoldings. He held the small bully by the shoulder, and said things, and the things that he said or his manner of saying them appeared to sober the children. In face he was as white as little Pengelly, and when he took that small and hump-backed creature by the hand, and brought him in and up the stairs of No. 7, Ruth crept to her door and listened.
Said Christopher very gently to the child:
“Don’t lose your temper with them. That’s just what they want. Put a smile on, Kiddy. Just stand and smile at them, and they’ll let you alone.”
“I know I’m ugly,” whimpered the child.
“No, you’re not. Besides, it’s worse to be ugly inside. I’ve got a basket of plums in my room. I’ll fill your cap.”
She heard Hazzard take the boy into his room, and little Pengelly’s voice asking questions. He was feeling comforted.
“You’ve got a fiddle.”
“I have.”
“My dad used to play the fiddle. He played beautiful, till his cough got too bad.”
“Why don’t you learn to play the fiddle? I suppose you have your father’s violin.”
“Oh, we had to sell that,” said the boy. “I did hear mother say it helped to pay for his coffin.”
