Then there was roast goose for dinner, and Clara amused herself by
making silly facetious faces, furtively, dangerously, under her father's
very eyes. The children feared goose for their father, whose digestion
was usually unequal to this particular bird. Like many fathers of
families in the Five Towns, he had the habit of going forth on Saturday
mornings to the butcher's or the poulterer's and buying Sunday's dinner.
He was a fairly good judge of a joint, but Maggie considered herself to
be his superior in this respect. However, Darius was not prepared to
learn from Maggie, and his purchases had to be accepted without
criticism. At a given meal Darius would never admit that anything
chosen and bought by him was not perfect; but a week afterwards, if the
fact was so, he would of his own accord recall imperfections in that
which he had asserted to be perfect; and he would do this without any
shame, without any apparent sense of inconsistency or weakness. Edwin
noticed a similar trait in other grown-up persons, and it astonished
him. It astonished him especially in his father, who, despite the
faults and vulgarities which his fastidious son could find in him,
always impressed Edwin as a strong man, a man with the heroic quality of
not caring too much what other people thought.
When Edwin saw his father take a second plateful of goose, with the
deadly stuffing thereof--Darius simply could not resist it, like most
dyspeptics he was somewhat greedy--he foresaw an indisposed and perilous
father for the morrow. Which prevision was supported by Clara's
pantomimic antics, and even by Maggie's grave and restrained sigh.
Still, he had sworn to write and send the letter, and he should do so.
A career, a lifetime, was not to be at the mercy of a bilious attack,
surely! Such a notion offended logic and proportion, and he scorned it
away.
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