'
'I seed him fast enough,' said the old woman, briskly. 'Shuffle, an' cut
three times.'
She then performed mysterious manoeuvres with the cards.
'I see pots o' money,' announced the sibyl.
'If she says it, it's there right enough,' said her son.
'She means my bonus,' said Owen. 'But that's only ten pounds. And I lose
it if I'm late twice more before Christmas.'
'It'll come sure enough.'
'Pots,' said the old woman, and she was still mumbling the encouraging
word when Owen left the kitchen and returned to the sitting-room.
He laughed rather ruefully. At that moment he could have found a use
for pots o' money.
He walked to the window, and looked out. It was a glorious morning. The
heat-mist was dancing over the meadow beyond the brook, and from the
farmyard came the liquid charawks of care-free fowls. It seemed wicked
to leave these haunts of peace for London on such a day.
An acute melancholy seized him. Absently, he sat down at the piano. The
prejudices of literary Mr Prosser had slipped from his mind. Softly at
first, then gathering volume as the spirit of the song gripped him, he
began to sing 'Asthore'. He became absorbed.
He had just, for the sixth time, won through to 'Iyam-ah waiting for-er
theeee-yass-thorre,' and was doing some intricate three-chord work
preparatory to starting over again, when a loaf of bread whizzed past
his ear.
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