"Halloo!" he said. "Where's father?"

"Don't know," said Thurston, sucking the words through his teeth. "I've
been wanting him too."

"Well, as he isn't here--" said Martin fiercely.

"No use me waiting? Quite so. All the same I'm going to wait."

The two figures were strangely contrasted, Martin red-brown with
health, thick and square, Thurston pale with a spotted complexion, dim
and watery eyes, legs and arms like sticks, his black clothes shabby
and his boots dusty.

Nevertheless at that moment it was Thurston who had the power. He moved
forward from the window. "Makes you fair sick to see me anywhere about
the 'ouse, doesn't it? Oh, I know ... You can't kid me. I've seen from
the first. You fair loathe the sight of me."

"That's nothing to do with it," said Martin uneasily. "Whether we like
one another or not, there's no need to discuss it."

"Oh, isn't there?" said Thurston, coming a little closer so that he was
standing now directly under the light of the candle. "Why not? Why
shouldn't we? What's the 'arm? I believe in discussing things myself. I
do really. I've said to myself a long way back. 'Well, now, the first
time I get 'im alone I'll ask him why 'e does dislike me. I've always
been civil to him,' I says to myself, 'and yet I can't please him--so
I'll just ask him straight.'"

Martin shrugged his shoulders; he wanted to leave the room, but
something in Thurston held him there.

"I suppose we aren't the sort to get on together. We haven't got enough
in common," he said clumsily.

"I don't know about that," Thurston said in a friendly conversational
tone. "I shouldn't wonder if we've got more in common than you'd fancy.
Now I'll tell you right out, I like you. I've always liked you, and
what's more I always shall. Whatever you do--"

"I don't care," broke in Martin angrily, "whether you like me or not."

"No, I know you don't," Thurston continued quietly. "And I know what
you think of me, too. This is your idea of me, I reckon--that I'm a
pushing, uneducated common bounder that's just using this religious
business to shove himself along with; that's kidding all these poor old
ladies that 'e believes in their bunkum, and is altogether about as
low-down a fellow as you're likely to meet with. That's about the
colour of it, isn't it?"

Martin said nothing. That was exactly "the colour of it."

"Yes, well," Thurston continued, a faint flush on his pale cheeks. "Of
course I know that all right.