The Virgin in Judgment - Eden Phillpotts

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of 'Frosty-face,' and provided this celebrity with one or two days' sport on the warren. Mr. Fogo proved no mean shot, and among other game of a good mixed bag, two wood-pigeons and three golden plover fell to his borrowed weapon. He discussed the Prize Ring for the gratification of Mr. Bowden on this occasion, but though David's father tried hard to learn how Bartley was coming on in his training, Mr. Fogo's silence upon that theme exceeded even the customary taciturnity of the Warren House. He was only concerned with the growing rumours of organised interference, yet he assured Mr. Bowden that the fight would certainly come off, at a time and place to be arranged by him and Reuben Shillabeer.

      It is to be noted that Crocker had now left his home altogether, and was living at 'The Corner House.' The high-handed attitude of his mother and her immense energy and indignation rendered this step necessary. The reminder that his grandfather had been a bailiff lacked force to shake Bartley from his evil determination; therefore she threatened to disinherit him, and hinted at incarceration and other vague counter-strokes. But when day followed day and nothing moderated his intention; when she saw that he had given up malt liquor and spirits; that he insisted on certain foods; that he rose at reasonable hours and took an immense deal of active exercise--when, in fact, she grasped the truth that her only son meant to fight a prize-fight, and was taking every possible precaution to win it, then she broke down and threatened no more, but became hysterical, melodramatic and mournful. It was enough that he entered the house for Nanny to fling herself into an attitude of despair. Her appetite suffered, her sleep suffered, even her spirits suffered. From being a dictatorial and assertive woman, who used her personality like a pistol, she grew meek, mild and plaintive. She wearied her hearers; she filled Susan's ears with pathetic details concerning her wasting flesh, and begged her to report them again to Bartley. Thus her son learned that his mother's stockings had become too large for her attenuated calves, and that her dresses were being taken in many inches as the result of a general atrophy of tissue produced by his behaviour. Nanny's eyes haunted him. She had, moreover, an art to drop tears exactly at those moments when he cast a sly side glance at her face. She would drop them on to her work, or her plate, or into her tea.

      These distressing circumstances finally ejected Bartley from the maternal threshold. He saw his mother daily, but felt that until the battle was lost or won, he could endure her constant remonstrances no more. He strove to make her take a sterner view, and she assured him that had she not been a woman of gentle birth, it might have been possible; but from one with the delicate Saunders blood in her veins, only a genteel outlook on life could be expected; and there was no room for tolerance of prize-fighting in that survey.

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