What was the good of practically reforming
if this sort of thing was going to happen to one?
'... Fifty-nine ... sixty.'
He opened his eyes. The monkey was still there, in precisely the
same attitude, as if it was sitting for its portrait. Panic surged
upon Nutty. He lost his head completely. He uttered a wild yell
and threw the bottle at the apparition.
Life had not been treating Eustace well that evening. He seemed to
have happened upon one of those days when everything goes wrong.
The cat had scratched him, the odd-job man had swathed him in an
apron, and now this stranger, in whom he had found at first a
pleasant restfulness, soothing after the recent scenes of violence
in which he had participated, did this to him. He dodged the
missile and clambered on to the top of the wardrobe. It was his
instinct in times of stress to seek the high spots. And then
Elizabeth hurried into the room.
Elizabeth had been lying in the hammock on the porch when her
brother's yell had broken forth. It was a lovely, calm, moonlight
night, and she had been revelling in the peace of it, when
suddenly this outcry from above had shot her out of her hammock
like an explosion. She ran upstairs, fearing she knew not what.
She found Nutty sitting on the bed, looking like an overwrought
giraffe.
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