Under one arm he carried a vast
inanimate form whose extremity just escaped the ground. This form was
his violoncello, fragile as a pretty woman, ungainly as a navvy, and
precious as honour. Mrs Swann looked down the street, which ended to the
east in darkness and a marl pit, and up the street, which ended to the
west in Trafalgar Road and electric cars; and she shivered, though she
had a shawl over her independent little shoulders. In the Five Towns,
and probably elsewhere, when a woman puts her head out of her front
door, she always looks first to right and then to left, like a scouting
Iroquois, and if the air nips she shivers--not because she is cold, but
merely to express herself.
"For goodness sake, keep your hands warm," Mrs Swann enjoined her son.
"Oh!" said Gilbert, with scornful lightness, as though his playing had
never suffered from cold hands, "it's quite warm to-night!" Which it was
not.
"And mind what you eat!" added his mother. "There! I can hear the car."
He hurried up the street. The electric tram slid in thunder down
Trafalgar Road, and stopped for him with a jar, and he gingerly climbed
into it, practising all precautions on behalf of his violoncello.
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