10上 | 管家的边界，愤怒的弧线

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两个醉汉加起来三岁behave like schoolboys，各种幼稚粗鲁coarse。管家老爸泰山崩于前而不动，面不改色心不跳，教养好到没天理immaculate courtesy。但是人若持续犯我，那么，哼哼。

正文阅读

For when they had wearied of hurling insults at my father's back, the two gentlemen began to discuss their host - that is to say, my father's employer, Mr John Silvers. 

The remarks grew ever more debased and treacherous so that Mr Charles - at least so he claimed - was obliged to intervene with the suggestion that such talk was bad form. This view was contradicted with such energy that Mr Charles, quite aside from worrying he would become the next focus of the gentlemen's attention, actually thought himself in danger of physical assault.

But then suddenly, following a particularly heinous insinuation against his employer, my father brought the car to an abrupt halt. It was what happened next that had made such an indelible impression upon Mr Charles.

The rear door of the car opened and my father was observed to be standing there, a few steps back from the vehicle, gazing steadily into the interior. As Mr Charles described it, all three passengers seemed to be overcome as one by the realization of what an imposing physical force my father was. Indeed, he was a man of some six feet three inches, and his countenance, though reassuring while one knew he was intent on obliging, could seem extremely forbidding viewed in certain other contexts. 

According to Mr Charles, my father did not display any obvious anger. He had, it seemed, merely opened the door. And yet there was something so powerfully rebuking, and at the same time so unassailable about his figure looming over them that Mr Charles's two drunken companions seemed to cower back like small boys caught by the farmer in the act of stealing apples.

Those were, Mr Charles recalls, strangely unnerving moments during which he too, despite not having participated in the preceding behaviour, felt engulfed with guilt. The silence seemed to go on interminably, before either Mr Smith or Mr Jones found it in him to- mutter: "I suppose we were talking a little out of turn there. It won't happen again."

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