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Updated: June 20, 2025
Slender and upright, immaculately high-collared, his thin serge suit molded by his sheer muscular development to the semblance of perfection, Ranny was a mark for loitering feet and wandering eyes.
"Whatever game is he playin' there?" A faint flicker passed over his mother's face, as if it pleased her that he could talk in that way. "Prescription," she said, and paused between her words to let it sink into him. "Makin' it up, he is. Old Mr. Beesley's heart mixture." "My Hat!" said Ranny. He was impressed by the gravity of the situation.
Ransome saw and grieved over and was powerless to help. In Christmas week the state of Mr. Ransome became terrible, not to be borne. Ranny was working hard at the counting-house; he was worn out, and he looked it. The sight of him, so changed, broke Mrs. Ransome down. "Ranny," she said, "I wish you'd get away somewhere for Christmas. Me and Mabel'll look after the children. You go."
There was nothing left of her beauty but her exuberant light-brown hair, which she dressed high on her head with a twist and a topknot piteously reminiscent of gaiety and charm. She laid her hand on the knob of the left-hand inner door. "He's in the dispensin'-room," she said. Ranny turned round. His features tilted slightly, compelled by something preposterous in the vision she had evoked.
Her eyes stared, not at her husband, but beyond and a little above him; there was a look in them of terror and enraged desire, as if the object of their vision were retreating, vanishing. But it was all vague, meaningless, incomprehensible to Ranny. He only remembered afterward, long afterward, that on that night when he had spoken of Mercier she had "looked queer."
For two years and four months she had had her son Ranny to herself. For two years and four months she had made him comfortable with a comfort he had never dreamed of, which most certainly he had never known. With tenderness and care and vigilance unabridged and unremitted, she had brought Granville and Stanley and Dossie to perfection. It had not been so hard.
He thought that she was tired of looking after Granville, when in reality she was only bored. As for her fits of sullenness and irritation, he had been initiated into their mystery on his wedding-day. The sullenness, the irritation had ceased so unmysteriously that Ranny in his matrimonial wisdom was left in no doubt as to its cause.
Then the mere suggestion of outwitting her grandmother and saving Papa Claude by such a master stroke of diplomacy struck her so humorously that she broke into laughter, in which Quin joined. "You two are very lively all of a sudden," Mrs. Ranny said over her shoulder. "What is the joke?" "Miss Eleanor and I have gone into the real estate business. Do you want to buy a farm?"
Violet, not having in her one atom of natural feeling, and caring only for her husband's manhood and his physical perfection, had left to Mrs. Ransome all that was most dear to her in Ranny. Married to Violet, he was still dependent on his mother. He clung to her, he deferred to her judgment, he came to her for comfort. If he had been ill it was she and not Violet who would have nursed him.
Why you furnished on the hire-purchase system. "Not much," said Ranny. He knew all about the hire-purchase system. So he backed out of it. He backed out of his Paradise, out of his dream. But to save his face he said he would think it over and let the Agent know on Monday. And the Agent smiled. He said he could take his time. There was no hurry. The house wouldn't run away.
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