at of a chair.
Whenever he had seen those gipsy chair-menders at work, he had been out
of doors and afraid to linger watching them in case he should be stolen
and his face stained with walnut juice and all his clothes taken away
from him. But from the security of the dining-room of the Mission House
he should enjoy watching them. However, no gipsy came, nor anybody else
except women with men's caps pinned to their skimpy hair and little
girls with wrinkled stockings carrying jugs to and from the public
houses that stood at every corner.

Mark turned away from the window and tried to think of some game that
could be played in the dining-room. But it was not a room that fostered
the imagination. The carpet was so much worn that the pattern was now
scarcely visible and, looked one at it never so long and intently, it
was impossible to give it an inner life of its own that gradually
revealed itself to the fanciful observer. The sideboard had nothing on
it except a dirty cloth, a bottle of harvest burgundy, and half a dozen
forks and spoons. The cupboards on either side contained nothing edible
except salt, pepper, mustard, vinegar, and oil. There was a plain deal
table without a drawer and without any interesting screws and levers to
make it grow smaller or larger at the will of the creature who sat
beneath it. The eight chairs were just chairs; the wallpaper was like
the inside of the bath, but alas, without the water; of the two
pictures, the one over the mantelpiece was a steel-engraving of the Good
Shepherd and the one over the sideboard was an oleograph of the Sacred
Heart. Mark knew every fly speck on their glasses, every discoloration
of their margins. While he was sighing over the sterility of the room,
he heard the door of his father's study open, and his father and Mr.
Astill do down the passage, both of them still talking unceasingly.
Presently the front door slammed, and Mark watched them walk away in the
direction of the new church. Here was an opportunity to go into his
father's study and look at some of the books. Mark never went in when
his father was there, because once his mother had said to his father:

"Why don't you have Mark to sit with you?"

And his father had answered doubtfully:

"Mark? Oh yes, he can come. But I hope he'll keep quiet, because I
shall be rather busy."

Mark had felt a kind of hostility in his father's manner which had
chilled him; and after that, whenever his mother used to su