And indeed, Curwen’s stout back, rigid with anger at his mistress’s presumption, every bristle on his stout neck standing on end, bore a striking resemblance to the well-fed and underworked German prisoners of war who still drove about the country-side in lorries while their conquerors bicycled or walked to work in all weathers.
Mrs. Arbuthnot said perhaps he had had some German ancestors, and Francis with great agility invented and developed a theory that in his name, Al, or Alfred Curwen, was merely Kurwenal in another guise, at which he and Mrs. Arbuthnot had the giggles, while Mrs. Brandon looked upon them much as Julia Mills had looked upon David and Dora, recalling the ancient days when she and earth had anything in common, a pose not unobserved by her son and not unappreciated.
As
