“They aren’t lessons.” She looked at him with some contempt. “They’re stories.”
“It’s such a long time ago since anyone told me stories,” said North apologetically. “I’m afraid I’ve forgotten.”
She looked at him with compassion, holding the battered doll closer to her. Her eyes reminded him of a rain-washed sky.
“I tell Tommy lots of stories,” she said.
Another child’s voice called to her from the wood, “Moira, Moira,” and she fled away. It was like the sudden flight of a bird.
“Who is the child who tells her dolls the story of the Ring?” he asked Ruth, when she rejoined him. “She is rather like one of Rackham’s Rhine Maidens herself, by the way.”
“Moria Kent? Isn’t she a lovely little thing? Her mother is the village school-mistress.”
“Ah, that accounts for it I suppose,” said North.
Ruth opened her mouth to speak, and closed it again. Instead of what she had meant to say, she said, “Come, it is time for tea. And I have ordered strawberries and cream.”