nd the others at the foot of the cliff, you know." He went on
up over the brow of the cliff, carrying the screaming, struggling Nicky
with the terrible ease of a grown-up coping with a child. Georgie
remained sitting where she was for a few moments till the exhausted
screams of Nicky died in the distance.

Ishmael's annoyance had not abated when they reached Cloom, though by
now his arm had tired somewhat, and Nicky, sobbing angrily, walked
beside him, firmly led by the hand. Ishmael took him up to the little
room over the porch which was Nicky's own and there administered a
whipping for the first time. Nicky was too exhausted to scream by then,
but his anger grew deeper. He was aware that his father had often passed
over worse actions, and that it was not so much his, Nicky's,
disobedience in the matter of throwing things at Georgie which was the
trouble as some mood of his father's which he had come up against. He
resented the knowledge and burned with his resentment. When Ishmael,
suddenly sorry, stayed his by no means heavy hand and stood the child
between his knees, Nicky would not face his look, but stood with tightly
shut eyes and set mouth. Ishmael thought it was shame at his punishment
which sealed Nicky's eyes; he knew what agonies it would have occasioned
him at that age, and he felt sorrier still. But Nicky never felt shame;
he could extract a compensating excitement from every untoward event,
and at the present moment he was making a luxury of his rage.

Ishmael tried to get some expression of contrition from the child, but
vainly, and at length he left him, safely shut in. He was very puzzled
as he went and smoked in the garden below. He would not go out on to the
cliff again lest Nicky should be up to any dangerous pranks in his room
or have another screaming fit. For the first time it was brought home to
him how terribly children differ from the children that their parents
were.... Nothing he remembered, be it never so vivid, about himself,
helped him to follow Nicky. He would never have drawn attention to
himself as Nicky constantly did; he would not have dared--his
self-conscious diffidence would not have let him. He had had fits of
losing his head, but more quietly, often in his imagination alone. He
did not see that the self-consciousness of childhood was at the bottom
of both his youthful reserve and Nicky's ebullitions. That his own pride
had been his dominating factor, forbidding him to enter into