‘Yes. Not since the day you arrived. It does seem a long while to me too, but believe me it wouldn’t be fair to the child to have all of us there at once.’
She had then busily talked of other matters, entertaining her visitor with tales of her simple but full life, explaining how she didn’t know, owing to never being idle a moment, what loneliness meant, and couldn’t understand why women should ever want to be anywhere but in their own homes.
‘At our age one wants just one’s own home, doesn’t one, dear Mrs. Cumfrit. However small it is, however modest, it is home. Don’t you too feel how, as one gets older, one’s own little daily round, one’s own little common task, gone cheerfully, done thoroughly, become more and more satisfying and beautiful?’
Catherine said she did.
Mrs. Colquhoun begged her to take some refreshment after her walk, declaring that after a certain age it was one’s duty not to overtax the body.
‘We grandmothers——’ she said, smiling.
Catherine endeavoured to respond to Mrs. Colquhoun’s playfulness, by more on the same lines of her own.
‘Oh, but we mustn’t count our grandchildren before they’re hatched,’ she had said with answering smiles.
And Mrs. Colquhoun had seemed a little shocked at that. The word hatched, perhaps ... in connection with Stephen’s child.
‘Dear Mrs. Cumfrit——’ she had murmured, in the tone of one overlooking a lapse.