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out his old soft brown felt hat. "'Ere's your 'at," she said in a
tone of insincere encouragement.
He had been routing among the piled newspapers under the kitchen
dresser, and had turned quite hopefully and taken the thing. He put it
on. But it didn't feel right. Nothing felt right. He put a trembling
hand upon the crown of the thing and pressed it on his head, and tried
it askew to the right and then askew to the left.
Then the full sense of the indignity offered him came home to him. The
hat masked the upper sinister quarter of his face, and he spoke with a
wrathful eye regarding his wife from under the brim. In a voice thick
with fury he said: "I s'pose you'd like me to wear that silly Mud Pie
for ever, eh? I tell you I won't. I'm sick of it. I'm pretty near sick
of everything, comes to that.... Hat!"
He clutched it with quivering fingers. "Hat!" he repeated. Then he
flung it to the ground, and kicked it with extraordinary fury across
the kitchen. It flew up against the door and dropped to the ground
with its ribbon band half off.
"Shan't go out!" he said, and sticking his hands into his jacket
pockets discovered the missing cap in the right one.
There was nothing for it but to go straight upstairs without a word,
and out, slamming the shop door hard.
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