“There’s the attic,” said Rosamund rather slowly. “It’s very big and light, and can easily be cleared. It used to be a sort of nursery.”
She remained a moment reflective, and Mrs. Tregaskis eyed her kindly and observantly.
“Fancy!” ejaculated Minnie in the silence.
“Yes,” said Rosamund. “It makes a very nice room, and there are two windows.” She thought to herself that she would rather like the attic, where she and Francie had played together, to be a nursery again.
“You’d rather like it to be a nursery again, wouldn’t you?” said Bertha gently.
The attic was made ready, and two days later the engaging Dickie was trotting round it and gazing through the big dormer windows on to the garden below.
Hazel, radiantly pretty and good-humoured, showed the caressing appreciation and gratitude for the welcome prepared that Rosamund had never known her fail to bestow. She played with the babies, gardened with Minnie, and answered all Bertha’s half-tentative questions with the same joyous unreserve of manner. If, in that very unreserve, there was a withholding, Rosamund thought it a most unconscious one. To Rosamund, Hazel gave of her loving way and impulses freely. Above all, she gave her, by a sort of tender instinct, what Rosamund needed most—the care of Dickie.
It was Dickie who, unknowing enough, completed what Mrs. Mulholland, with her kind, inadequate goodness, had begun after Frances’ death.
Rosamund came to realize that, on the day that she received news of Mrs. Mulholland’s death. She was in the garden with Ludovic Argent, as so often now, under the big Spanish chestnut from which still hung, stained and creaking, the frayed ropes and wide seat of the swing that had belonged to her and to Frances.
“Mrs. Mulholland is dead,” she said, with wet eyes. “She just died in her sleep, on Sunday night. They’ve written from the convent to tell me.”