He had been weeding the lawn from before breakfast-time till about five o’clock every evening for six weeks. At first Laura had felt there was something almost abnormal about such persistence (although persistence was a virtue), but she accepted it now. ‘I’m just going up to the shops, Felix. Can I get you anything?’ She leaned over the verandah railing at the front of the house and called down to him. There was a pause. She waited. In time, he lifted a bleak face till his eyes were level with her shoes; he looked at them with blind contempt and bent his back again like a slave. Laura went away. Just as Jack Roberts had disappeared and, according to hearsay, prospered fantastically, so Peter Trotter had vanished and prospered. Now, without interest or income, Felix was too morose to go further from the house than the garden. Although it was an experience he had undergone quite often, it surprised and aggrieved him that, having sold his business and gratified Peter, he should not still have a business and see Peter as regularly as before.
