As the house began to teem with rushing, half-n***d clean children, one of the parents rose, either the mother, easy and slatternly, with her thick, dark hair loosely coiled and slipping over one ear, or the father, warm and comfortable, with ruffled black hair and shirt unbuttoned at the neck.
Then the girls upstairs heard the continual:
“ Now then, Billy, what are you up to?” in the father’s strong, vibrating voice: or the mother’s dignified:
“ I have said, Cassie, I will not have it.”
It was amazing how the father’s voice could ring out like a gong, without his being in the least moved, and how the mother could speak like a queen holding an audience, though her blouse was sticking out all round and her hair was not fastened up and the children were yelling a pandemonium.
Gradua
