“How beautiful you look. You put on ties better than anyone I know. I wish I could wear things draped round my neck.”
Miriam sat down in the opposite wicker chair.
“Isn’t it cold—my feet are freezing; it’s raining.”
“Take off your shoes.”
Miriam got off her shoes and propped them in the fender to dry.
“What is that book?”
“Eden Philpotts’s ‘Children of the Mist’” fluted the voice reverently. “Read it?”
“No” said Miriam expectantly.
The eager face turned to an eager profile with eyes brooding into the fire. “He’s so wonderful” mused the voice and Miriam watched eagerly. Mag read books—for their own sake; and could judge them and compare them with other books by the same author ... but all this wonderful knowledge made her seem wistful; knowing all about books and plays and strangely wistful and regretful; the things that made her eyes blaze and made her talk reverently or in indignant defence always seemed sad in the end ... wistful hero worship ... raving about certain writers and actors as if she did not know they were people.
“He’s so wonderful” went on the voice with its perpetual modulations “he gets all the atmosphere of the west country—perfectly. You live there while you’re reading him.”