"I'm sure he'd help you, or any of us, if he could. His one pleasure in life is helping people. All the same he won't be able to understand your point of view this time."
"Not only point of view, but smell and touch," explained Jeremy. "Let him ask himself what he'd feel if his dogs were swept away and he had to live with nought but a parcel of cats. Then he'll see what I'm feeling. Tell him I want to get away from the fruits of the earth, and never wish to see one of them again; and I'd sacrifice a lot to do so, and so would Jane."
She left him then and proceeded to her mother's. She felt disturbed that Jeremy should have failed once more. But she smiled to hear him talk of 'biting on the bullet.'
"I know what that means better than ever he will," thought she.
Then Margery reflected concerning her own purpose, and, having already determined to speak to her mother, now asked herself what she should say. When it became a question of spoken words the difficulty appeared, for she was no longer in the temper to experiment with any words at all. Her mood had changed from anger to melancholy; she weighed her proposed speech and doubted whether, after all, Mrs. Huxam had better hear it. Something suddenly and forcibly told her that her mother would not be vague or neutral in such a matter. To confess to Judith would certainly entail following her mother's subsequent directions, and Margery much doubted what they might be. She was still divided in mind when she joined Mrs. Huxam.
The elder sat by a fire in her bedroom, with a shawl wrapped round her head. From its whiteness her face peered, also pale. Her eyes were heavy and her breathing disordered, but she was wide awake listening to Auna, who read the Bible and laboured diligently for her grandmother with the Second Book of Kings.
"'And Jehoash did that which was right in the sight of the Lord all his days——'" piped Auna; then she broke off and beamed.
"Oh, granny, isn't it a blessing to find somebody who did right before the Lord—for a change?"
"It is," croaked the old woman. "Few ever did and few ever will."
Auna, liberated from her record of faulty monarchs, left Margery with Mrs. Huxam and joined a young woman who operated in the post-office below.