James, he hardly entered into the fabric of
her existence. Life to her was the cat-like attempt to get as much
comfort as possible regardless of others. The only emotion Ishmael
obtained out of Cloom came from Katie Jacka, and that was rather
unhealthy, because furtive and sentimental, and he only detested it. As
to his mother, that hectic, uneven creature, she was to him a
loud-voiced person of tempers and tendernesses equally gusty, not a
being as much "I" to herself as he was to himself. It was only on the
day following the supper party that he began to be affected by her as a
violent personality.

It was a grey day, threatening with rain which might mean ruin to the
cut corn waiting to be stacked in the great arishmows that always seemed
to Ishmael like the tents of some magic host. All the way up from the
Vicarage, which lay a couple of sloping miles away, his thoughts and
hopes were busy, triumphing over the greyness and the faint damping mist
that blew in from the sea like smoke. For, somehow, after last night, he
expected everything to be "different." How, he hardly knew; but for the
first time in his life he had been allowed to be himself--more, himself
had been discovered to be Somebody. True, there had been that
mortification at supper which gave him what felt like an actual physical
hollow in his chest when he thought of it, but after that the Parson had
set him up and everyone had cheered him, and Archelaus had not dared do
anything to spoil it. He had been called "the little master"--well, if
last night, why not to-day? Katie would probably be cleaning up when he
arrived, but she would see him and call out. "Here's the little master
come back!" ... and his mother would ask him whether he would like a
piece of cake. So he went on planning, after the dramatic manner of all
imaginative children. He would be very nice to them all, but he too
would be different, now that he knew who he was. For the Parson, finding
him intensely puzzled, had partially explained to him that morning.
Questions of legitimacy, and any reflection on his mother, Boase had
omitted for the time being, merely telling him that when he was grown
up Cloom would be his because his father had willed it so. He tried to
impress on Ishmael that usually the eldest son inherited everything, and
so it was natural that Archelaus should feel hurt about it. At first
Ishmael, with the quick generosity of his age, had wanted to give Cloom
up to his brot