Miriam looked up. Her mouth opened, her dark eyes blazed and winced, but she said nothing. She swallowed her anger and her shame, bowing her dark head.
"I'm sure she was trying hard," said the mother.
"She hasn't got sense even to boil the potatoes," said Edgar. "What is she kept at home for?"
"On'y for eating everything that's left in th' pantry," said Maurice.
"They don't forget that potato-pie against our Miriam," laughed the father.
She was utterly humiliated. The mother sat in silence, suffering, like some saint out of place at the brutal board.
It puzzled Paul. He wondered vaguely why all this intense feeling went running because of a few burnt potatoes. The mother exalted everything--even a bit of housework--to the plane of a religious trust. The sons resented this; they felt themselves cut away underneath, and they answered with brutality and also with a sneering superciliousness.
Paul was just opening out from childhood into manhood. This atmosphere, where everything took a religious value, came with a subtle fascination to him. There was something in the air. His own mother was logical. Here there was something different, something he loved, something that at times he hated.
Miriam quarrelled with her brothers fiercely. Later in the afternoon, when they had gone away again, her mother said:
"You disappointed me at dinner-time, Miriam."
"They are such _brutes_!" she suddenly cried, looking up with flashing eyes.
"But hadn't you promised not to answer them?" said the mother. "And I believed in you. I _can't_ stand it when you wrangle."
"But they're so hateful!" cried Miriam, "and--and _low_."
"Yes, dear. But how often have I asked you not to answer Edgar back? Can't you let him say what he likes?"
"Aren't you strong enough to bear it, Miriam, if even for my sake? Are you so weak that you must wrangle with them?"
Mrs. Leivers stuck unflinchingly to this doctrine of "the other cheek." She could not instil it at all into the boys. With the girls she succeeded better, and Miriam was the child of her heart. The boys loathed the other cheek when it was presented to them. Miriam was often sufficiently lofty to turn it. Then they spat on her and hated her. But she walked in her proud humility, living within herself.