"I didn't talk loud. I've got a little voice. I can never hear myself singing at prayers in school, though I try till I get that horrid aching in my ears. So I don't bother very much now, and I just move my mouth. I tried in the glass, and it looks the same. Oh, I wish we'd had breakfast, and it was ten o'clock. I think I'll go and have it."
In the kitchen Bessie was moving from table to cupboard in that dark groping way of hers.
"I've been more than five minutes," said Theresa.
"Well, I couldn't get the fire to burn. What a grate! Here, Miss Terry, finish laying for me while I stir the porridge. And your father will be back hungry, I daresay, and your mother wanting her tray! That's her bell. Just run up and see what she wants."
Theresa met her mother on the landing going to the bath. Her fair waving hair was piled confusedly on the top of her head; she wore a long blue dressing-gown, which was the colour of her eyes, and over her shoulder she had flung a towel. Theresa thought she looked very lovely, and she clasped her hands in her quick movement of joy.
"Oh," she said, "are you better?" and tiptoed to be kissed.
"So this is a kissing morning, is it?" said Nancy, with her little tilting smile.
Theresa nodded. "When you look like that! Did you want anything?"
"Only to tell Bessie I'll have breakfast with Father when he comes. It wouldn't do to be in bed when he arrived. We won't tell him I wasn't well, Terry, or he'll never want to go away again."
"He doesn't anyhow," she said. "But I won't tell."