“What?”
“Like best.”
“I liked them both. I married the first when I was quite a girl. Then I loved your grandfather when I was a woman. There is a difference.”
They were silent for a time.
“Did you cry when my first grandfather died?” the child asked.
Lydia Brangwen rocked herself on the bed, thinking aloud.
“When we came to England, he hardly ever spoke, he was too much concerned to take any notice of anybody. He grew thinner and thinner, till his cheeks were hollow and his mouth stuck out. He wasn’t handsome any more. I knew he couldn’t bear being beaten, I thought everything was lost in the world. Only I had your mother a baby, it was no use my dying.
“He looked at me with his black eyes, almost as if he hated me, when he was ill, and said, ‘It only wanted this. It only wanted that I should leave you and a young child to starve in this London.’ I told him we should not starve. But I was young, and foolish, and frightened, which he knew.
“He was bitter, and he never gave way. He lay beating his brains, to see what he could do. ‘I don’t know what you will do,’ he said. ‘I am no good, I am a failure from beginning to end. I cannot even provide for my wife and child!’
“But you see, it was not for him to provide for us. My life went on, though his stopped, and I married your grandfather.