Ishmael’s annoyance had not abated when they reached Cloom, though by now his arm had tired somewhat, and Nicky, sobbing angrily, walked beside him, firmly led by the hand.  Ishmael took him up to the little room over the porch which was Nicky’s own and there administered a whipping for the first time.  Nicky was too exhausted to scream by then, but his anger grew deeper.  He was aware that his father had often passed over worse actions, and that it was not so much his, Nicky’s, disobedience in the matter of throwing things at Georgie which was the trouble as some mood of his father’s which he had come up against.  He resented the knowledge and burned with his resentment.  When Ishmael, suddenly sorry, stayed his by no means heavy hand and stood the child between his knees, Nicky would not face his look, but stood with tightly shut eyes and set mouth.  Ishmael thought it was shame at his punishment which sealed Nicky’s eyes; he knew what agonies it would have occasioned him at that age, and he felt sorrier still.  But Nicky never felt shame; he could extract a compensating excitement from every untoward event, and at the present moment he was making a luxury of his rage.

Ishmael tried to get some expression of contrition from the child, but vainly, and at length he left him, safely shut in.  He was very puzzled as he went and smoked in the garden below.  He would not go out on to the cliff again lest Nicky should be up to any dangerous pranks in his room or have another screaming fit.  For the first time it was brought home to him how terribly children differ from the children that their parents were....  Nothing he remembered, be it never so vivid, about himself, helped him to follow Nicky.  He would never have drawn attention to himself as Nicky constantly did; he would not have dared—­his self-conscious diffidence would not have let him.  He had had fits of losing his head, but more quietly, often in his imagination alone.  He did not see that the self-consciousness of childhood was at the bottom of both his youthful reserve and Nicky’s ebullitions.  That his own pride had been his dominating factor, forbidding him to enter into contests where he was bound to be worsted, and that for Nicky pride did not exist in comparison with the luxury of spreading himself and his feelings over the widest possible area with the greatest possible noise, made the difference between them so marked that Ishmael could see nothing else.  Nicky had inherited from older sources, he reflected, a flamboyance such as Vassie and Archelaus and, in his underhand way, even Tom possessed, but that had missed himself.

Killigrew and the others were coming over to supper, and the Parson also was expected.  Ishmael judged that Nicky had had enough excitement for one day, and so, though not as any further punishment, sent him to bed with a supper-tray instead of letting him come down.  He recounted the afternoon’s happenings at supper and confessed himself hopelessly puzzled.