“That’s better,” said Mr. Corrie.
“Good-bye,” breathed Miriam, getting rapidly to the door ... poor wretched man ... wanting quiet kindness.
“Thank you; good-bye,” said Mr. Corrie gently.
9
“Then you’d say, Corrie,” said Mr. Staple-Craven, as they all sat down to dinner on Sunday, evening ... now comes flattery, thought Miriam calmly—nothing mattered, the curtains were back, the light not yet gone from the garden and birds were fluting and chirruping out there on the lawn where she had played tennis all the afternoon—at home there was the same light in the little garden and Sarah and Harriett were there in happiness, she would see them soon and meantime, the wonder, the fresh rosebuds, this year’s, under the clear soft lamplight.
“You’d say that no one was to blame for the accident.”
“The cause of the accident was undoubtedly the signalman’s sudden attack of illness.”
Pause. “It sounds,” thought Miriam, “as if he were reading from the Book of Judgment. It isn’t true either. Perhaps a judgment can never be true.” She pondered to the singing of her blood.
“In other words,” said one of the younger men, in a narrow nasal sneering clever voice, “it was a purely accidental accident.”
“Purely,” gurgled Mr. Corrie, in a low, pleased tone.