It missed him by an inch, and crashed against a plaster
statuette of the Infant Samuel on the top of the piano.
It was a standard loaf, containing eighty per cent of semolina, and it
practically wiped the Infant Samuel out of existence. At the same
moment, at his back, there sounded a loud, wrathful snort.
He spun round. The door was open, and at the other side of the table
was standing a large, black-bearded, shirt-sleeved man, in an attitude
rather reminiscent of Ajax defying the lightning. His hands trembled.
His beard bristled. His eyes gleamed ferociously beneath enormous
eyebrows. As Owen turned, he gave tongue in a voice like the discharge
of a broadside.
'Stop it!'
Owen's mind, wrenched too suddenly from the dreamy future to the vivid
present, was not yet completely under control. He gaped.
'Stop--that--infernal--noise!' roared the man.
He shot through the door, banging it after him, and pounded up the
stairs.
Owen was annoyed. The artistic temperament was all very well, but
there were limits. It was absurd that obscure authors should behave in
this way. Prosser! Who on earth was Prosser? Had anyone ever heard of
him? No! Yet here he was going about the country clipping small boys
over the ear-hole, and flinging loaves of bread at bank-clerks as if he
were Henry James or Marie Corelli.
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