"I've been bullying your mother about that ill-doing brother of yours," he said. "I thought I'd better say a word or two to you on the same subject."
"Thank you, Mr. Boult. You have forgotten to take off your hat."
He took it off with reluctance, because it concealed the bald top of his head, and without being asked to do so, seated himself in the chair opposite hers.
Every man carries about with him his ideal of what a woman should look like, although he probably changes it a good many times before he arrives at the age, in Emily's opinion, dangerous for a lover. At the mature age of fifty-five, George Boult's ideal happened to be realised by Bessie Day. Fair-skinned she was, and very plump. Her waist was small, exceedingly, as was in accordance with the taste of that day, but her hips and bust were large; there was a promise of a double chin to come later. The necklace of Venus showed alluringly in her full young throat, and in the knuckles of her small white hands were dimples.
"Is that how you pass your days?" George Boult asked her, pointing to the book she still held in her hands.
"Reading? A part of my day. A very good way, too, to pass it. Don't you think so?"
"I call it a sinful way. A sinful waste of time."
"Oh, Mr. Boult! But it is only stupid, uncultured people who don't read."
"I read my newspaper every day," he said, as if she had accused him. "It is all that business people have time for."
"I'm so glad I'm not a business person, then."
"You never will be! One of the idle ones of the earth, Miss Bessie. Those that toil not neither do they spin."
"A lily of the field," Bessie reminded him.
"I have told you before, a fine, healthy young woman like you has no right to be sitting over the fire in idleness."
"Go down and wait in the shop. Why not? If you would do so your mother could get rid of Pretty."
Bessie turned on him a face flushed with anger: "I will never wait in the shop," she said. "I hate the shop. I hate all shops, except to spend money in."
"Ah, you'd do that, I don't doubt," he said, with a certain bitterness. He utterly condemned the fat, lazy girl. He would have liked to see her down on her knees scrubbing the boards. He would have enjoyed the chance to punish her for her frivolity, the impertinence, the nonsense, that yet in some unaccountable way attracted him. He looked angrily at her, and Bessie watched him. Perhaps he was going to show the "dangerousness" incident to his time of life at last.