He pulled out his watch hastily and, having replaced it, gulped down his coffee. “When I was Peter’s age, we were brought up like brothers together. I loved him then; I’m disappointed in him now. And yet I’m always catching glimpses in him of the little chap I played with. You see, at school I was the stronger and had to protect him. I was always fighting his battles. And one whole term, when his hand was poisoned, I had to take him to the doctor to get it dressed—— No, it isn’t only pity, Pepperminta: it’s memories.”
As he was going out of the door she called after him, “Then, I suppose, I can write and say we’ll have them?”
“While they’re moving—the children? Yes.”
“Jehane doesn’t say how many.”
“She means all, I expect. There’s the garden for them—it’ll be fun for Kay and Peter.”
A week later, Jehane traveled across London to Top-bury Terrace, bringing with her Glory, aged nine, Riska, aged six, and her youngest child, Eustace, who was the same age as Kathleen. Jehane was now in her thirty-seventh year, a striking brooding type of woman. As her face had grown thinner and her cheeks had lost their color, the gipsy blackness of her appearance had become more noticeable. She still had a fine figure, so that men in public conveyances would furtively lower their papers to gaze at her. There clung about her an atmosphere of adventure, of which she was not entirely unaware. She was unconquerably romantic, and would spin herself stories in the silence of her fancy of a love that was crushing in its intensity. No one would have guessed from the hard little lines about the corners of her eyes and mouth that this imaginative tenderness formed part of her character.
Since the birth of Eustace her hair had fallen out in handfuls and she had adopted a style of dressing it that was distinctly unbecoming. She had had her combings made up into an affair which Glory called “Ma’s mat.” It consisted of half-a-dozen curls, sewn together in rows like sausages, which she pinned across the top of her head so that they made a fringe along her forehead. It gave her an old-fashioned look of prim severity. Jehane retained for Nan an affection which was partly genuine and partly habit; but she resented Nan’s youthful appearance with slow jealous anger, attributing it to freedom from anxiety and the possession of money. As for Nan, her attitude was one of gentle and atoning apology for her happiness. “I’m so glad you brought the children yourself, Janey.”
“And who could have brought them? I’m not like you—I only keep two servants. When this scheme of Ocky’s has turned out all right, perhaps it may be different.”
She turned swiftly on Nan with latent defiance, as though challenging her to express doubt.
“I’m sure both Billy and I hope it will. Wouldn’t it be splendid to see Ocky really a big man?”