late again.

That there was any love growing between him and Miriam neither of
them would have acknowledged. He thought he was too sane for such
sentimentality, and she thought herself too lofty. They both were late
in coming to maturity, and psychical ripeness was much behind even the
physical. Miriam was exceedingly sensitive, as her mother had always
been. The slightest grossness made her recoil almost in anguish. Her
brothers were brutal, but never coarse in speech. The men did all
the discussing of farm matters outside. But, perhaps, because of the
continual business of birth and of begetting which goes on upon every
farm, Miriam was the more hypersensitive to the matter, and her blood
was chastened almost to disgust of the faintest suggestion of such
intercourse. Paul took his pitch from her, and their intimacy went on in
an utterly blanched and chaste fashion. It could never be mentioned that
the mare was in foal.

When he was nineteen, he was earning only twenty shillings a week, but
he was happy. His painting went well, and life went well enough. On the
Good Friday he organised a walk to the Hemlock Stone. There were three
lads of his own age, then Annie and Arthur, Miriam and Geoffrey. Arthur,
apprenticed as an electrician in Nottingham, was home for the holiday.
Morel, as usual, was up early, whistling and sawing in the yard. At
seven o'clock the family heard him buy threepennyworth of hot-cross
buns; he talked with gusto to the little girl who brought them, calling
her "my darling". He turned away several boys who came with more buns,
telling them they had been "kested" by a little lass. Then Mrs. Morel
got up, and the family straggled down. It was an immense luxury to
everybody, this lying in bed just beyond the ordinary time on a weekday.
And Paul and Arthur read before breakfast, and had the meal unwashed,
sitting in their shirt-sleeves. This was another holiday luxury. The
room was warm. Everything felt free of care and anxiety. There was a
sense of plenty in the house.

While the boys were reading, Mrs. Morel went into the garden. They were
now in another house, an old one, near the Scargill Street home, which
had been left soon after William had died. Directly came an excited cry
from the garden:

"Paul! Paul! come and look!"

It was his mother's voice. He threw down his book and went out. There
was a long garden that ran to a field. It was a grey, cold day, with a
sharp wind blowing out of Derby