§
She longed very much for the company of Mr. Pinner.
‘Father,’ she thought, while Jocelyn was fetching the car, and she was standing alone in the passage watching the luggage, for she had been bred carefully never to leave luggage an instant by itself, ‘Father—’e could tell me.’
What she wanted Mr. Pinner to tell her wasn’t at all clear in her mind, but she was quite clear that he would tell her if he could, whereas Jocelyn, who certainly could, wouldn’t. Mr. Luke, she felt in her bones, even if she had the courage to ask him anything would only be angry with her because she didn’t already know it; yet how could she know it if nobody had ever told her? At home they usedn’t to jump down one’s throat if one asked a question. ‘Snug,’ thought Sally, her head drooping in wistful recollection, while with the point of her umbrella she affectionately stroked the sides of the tin trunk, ‘snug at ’ome in the shop—snug at ’ome in the lil’ shop—’ and whatever else being married to a gentleman was, it wasn’t snug.
Marriage to a gentleman—why, you never knew where you were from one moment to another; nothing settled about it; no cut and come again feeling; all ups and downs, without, as one might say, any middles; all either cross looks or, without warning, red ears, kisses, and oh-Sallyings. It was as if words weren’t the same when a gentleman got hold of them. They seemed somehow to separate. Queer, thought Sally, wistfully stroking the tin trunk.
She groped round in her hazy thoughts. She was in a strange country, and there was a fog, and yet she had somehow to get somewhere. She swearing?