I.
She waited.
Mamma and Mark had turned their backs to her as they clung together. But there was his sparrow-brown hair, clipped close into the nape of his red-brown neck. If only Mamma wouldn't cry like that—
"Mark—"
"Is that Minky?"
They held each other and let go in one tick of the clock, but she had stood a long time seeing his eyes arrested in their rush of recognition. Disappointed.
The square dinner-table stretched itself into an immense white space between her and Mark. It made itself small again for Mark and Mamma. Across the white space she heard him saying things: about Dan meeting him at Tilbury, and poor Victor coming to Liverpool Street, and Cox's. Last night he had stayed at Ilford, he had seen Bella and Edward and Pidgeon and Mrs. Fisher and the Proparts. "Do you remember poor Edward and his sheep? And Mary's lamb!"
Mark hadn't changed, except that he was firmer and squarer, and thinner, because he had had fever. And his eyes—He was staring at her with his disappointed eyes.
She called to him. "You don't know me a bit, Mark."
He laughed. "I thought I'd see somebody grown up. Victor said Mary was dreadfully mature. What did he mean?"
Mamma said she was sure she didn't know.
"What do you do with yourself all day, Minky?"
"Nothing much. Read—work—play tennis with Mr. Sutcliffe."
"Mr.—Sutcliffe?"
"Never mind Mr. Sutcliffe. Mark doesn't want to hear about him."
"Is there a Mrs. Sutcliffe?"
"Yes."
"Does she play?"
"No. She's too old. Much older than he is."
"That'll do, Mary."
Mamma's eyes blinked. Her forehead was pinched with vexation. Her foot tapped on the floor.
Mark's eyes kept up their puzzled stare.
"What's been happening?" he said. "What's the matter? Everywhere I go there's a mystery. There was a mystery at Ilford. About Dan. And about poor Charlotte. I come down here and there's a mystery about some people called Sutcliffe. And a mystery about Mary." He laughed again. "Minky seems to be in disgrace, as if she'd done something…. It's awfully queer. Mamma's the only person something hasn't happened to."
"I should have thought everything had happened to me," said Mamma.
"That makes it queerer."
Mamma went up with Mark into his room. Papa's room. You could hear her feet going up and down in it, and the squeaking wail of the wardrobe door as she opened and shut it.
She waited, listening. When she heard her mother come downstairs she went to him.
Mark didn't know that the room had been Papa's room. He didn't know that she shivered when she saw him sitting on the bed. She had stood just there where Mark's feet were and watched Papa die. She could feel the basin slipping, slipping from the edge of the bed.
Mark wasn't happy. There was something he missed, something he wanted. She had meant to say, "It's all right. Nothing's happened. I haven't done anything," but she couldn't think about it when she saw him sitting there.
"Mark—what is it?"
"I don't know, Minky."
"I know. You've come back, and it isn't like what you thought it would be."
"No," he said, "it isn't…. I didn't think it would be so awful without
Papa."