§ 4
Upon this scene there presently appeared a new actor. He was preluded by a knocking at the door, he was ushered in by Mrs. Pybus who was opening and shutting her mouth in a state of breathless respect; he was received with the utmost deference by the young man with red hair. Indeed, from the moment when his knocking was heard without, the manner and bearing of the red-haired young man underwent the most marvellous change. An agitated alacrity appeared in his manner; he stood up and moved nervously; by weak, neck-ward movements of his head he seemed to indicate he now regretted wearing such a bright green tie. The newcomer appeared in the doorway. He was a tall, grey-clad, fair gentleman, with a face that twitched and a hand that dandled in front of him. He grinned his teeth at the room. “So thassem,” he said, touching his teeth with his thumbnail.
He nodded confidentially to the red-haired young man without removing his eyes from Joan and Peter. He showed still more of his teeth and rattled his thumbnail along them. Then he waved his hand over the table. “Clear all this away,” he said, and sat down in the young man’s chair. Mrs. Pybus cleared away rapidly, assisted abjectly by the young man.
Mr. Grimes seemed to check off the two children. “You’re Joan,” he said. “I needn’t bother about you. You’re provided for. Peter. Peter’s our business.”
He got out a pocket-book and pencil. “Let’s look at you, Peter. Just come out here, will you?”
Peter obeyed reluctantly and suspiciously.
“No stockings. Don’t they wear stockings at that school of yours?”
“Not when we don’t want them,” said Peter. “No.”
“’Mazes me you wear anything,” said Mr. Grimes. “S’pose it’ll come to that. Let’s see your hat.”
“Haven’t got a hat,” said Peter. “Wouldn’t wear it if I had.”
“Wouldn’t you!” said Mr. Grimes. “H’m!”
“Nice little handful,” said Mr. Grimes, and hummed. He produced a paper from the pocket-book and read it, rubbing his teeth with the point of his pencil.
“Lersee whassor outfit we wan’,” said Mr. Grimes. “H’m.... H’m.... H’m....”
He stood up briskly. “Well, young man, we must go out and get you some clothes and things. What’s called a school outfit. We’ll have to go in that motor-car again. Quickest way. Get your hat. But you haven’t got a hat.”
“Me come too,” said Joan.
“No. You can’t come to a tailor’s, and that’s where we’re going. Little girls can’t come to tailors, you know,” said Mr. Grimes.
Peter thought privately that Mr. Grimes was just the sort of beast who would take you to a tailor’s. Well, he would stick it out. This couldn’t go on for ever. He allowed himself to be guided by Mr. Grimes to the door. He restrained an impulse to ask to be allowed to sit beside the driver. One doesn’t ask favours of beasts like Grimes.
Joan went to the window to watch the car and Mr. Grimes’ proceedings mistrustfully.
“I got a nice picture-book for you to look at,” said Mrs. Pybus, coming behind her. “Don’t go standing and staring out of the window, dearie. It’s an idle thing to stare out of windows.”
Joan had an unpleasant feeling that she had to comply with this. Under the initiative of Mrs. Pybus she sat up to the table and permitted a large book to be opened in front of her, feigning attention. She kept her eye as much as possible on the window. She was aware of Peter getting into the car with Mr. Grimes. There was a sudden buzzing of machinery, the slam of a door, and the automobile moved and vanished.
She gave a divided attention to the picture-book before her, which was really not properly a picture-book at all but an old bound volume of the Illustrated London News full of wood engravings of royal processions and suchlike desiccated matter. It was a dusty, frowsty volume, damp-stained at the edges. She tried to be amused. But it was very grey and dull, and she felt strangely uneasy. Every few minutes she would look up expecting to see the car back outside, but it did not return....
She heard the red-haired young man in the passage saying he thought he’d have to be getting round to the railway-station, and there was some point explained by Mrs. Pybus at great length and over and over again about the difference between the Great Western and the South Western Railway. The front door slammed after him at last, and Mrs. Pybus was audible returning to her kitchen.
Presently she came and looked at Joan with a thin, unreal smile on her white face.
“Getting on all right with the pretty pictures, dearie?” she asked.
“When’s Peter coming back?” asked Joan.
“Oh, not for a longish bit,” said Mrs. Pybus. “You see, he’s going to school.”
“Can I go to school?”
“Not ’is school. He’s going to a boy school.”
“Oh!” said Joan, learning for the first time that schools have sexes. “Can I go out in the garden?”
“It isn’t much of a garden,” said Mrs. Pybus. “But what there is you’re welcome.”
It wasn’t much of a garden. Rather it was a yard, into which a lean-to scullery, a coal shed, and a dustbin bit deeply. Along one side was a high fence cutting it off from a similar yard, and against this high fence a few nasturtiums gingered the colour scheme. A clothes-line stretched diagonally across this space and bore a depressed pair of black stockings, and in the corner at the far end a lilac bush was slowly but steadily and successfully wishing itself dead. The opposite corner was devoted to a collection of bottles, the ribs of an umbrella, and a dust-pan that had lost its handle. From beneath this curious rather than pleasing accumulation peeped the skeleton of a “rockery” built of brick clinkers and free from vegetation of any sort. An unseen baby a garden or two away deplored its existence loudly. At intervals a voice that sounded like the voice of an embittered little girl cut across these lamentations:
“Well, you shouldn’t ’ave broke yer bottle,” said the voice, with a note of moral demonstration....
Joan stayed in this garden for exactly three minutes. Then she returned to Mrs. Pybus, who was engaged in some dim operations with a kettle in the kitchen. “Drat this old kitchener!” said Mrs. Pybus, rattling at a damper.
“Want to go ’ome,” Joan said, in a voice that betrayed emotion.
Mrs. Pybus turned her meagre face and surveyed Joan without excessive tenderness.
“This is your ’ome, dearie,” she said.
“I live at Ingle-Nook,” said Joan.
Mrs. Pybus shook her head. “All that’s been done away with,” she said. “Your aunts ’ave give you up, and you’re going to live ’ere for good—’long o’ me.”