“This stove eat wood. Missis should see. I put plenty logs on.”
“She’s right, you know,” Rose said, stepping back, and pushing the hair from her face. “Jim ought to buy a new stove. He’d save money on it in the long run. But he hasn’t the cooking to do; he merely grumbles when he has to order the wood. Is the table laid, Maggie? Then you can begin to dish up.”
She put a hand through her sister’s arm and drew her out to the doorstep, where they stood watching the children, both a little silent and thoughtful in mood.
“Aren’t you hating it, being back again?” Rose asked presently, and bent a keen look on her young sister’s face. Esmé looked up to smile.
“I suppose one always feels a little regretful at the finish of a holiday,” she said. “But of course I don’t hate being back.”
Rose did not press the point. Something in the girl’s manner, something even in the reticence she betrayed in speaking of her holiday, puzzled her. Esmé was usually more expansive. She did not seem to wish to talk of her experiences. Perhaps, after all, she had had a disappointing time. But the rest and the change had given her back her strength. Had it? Rose looked at her again more attentively. She appeared to be in excellent health; but she had lost her old gaiety; she seemed depressed.
“You are tired after the journey,” she said. “Come on in and have something to eat.”
She called the children away from their play; and they all went into the little dining-room and sat, crowded uncomfortably, round the small table.
Jim served the food, and was jocular and determinedly cheerful. He was pleased to have his sister-in-law home again. It was all rather noisy and uncomfortable. The girl’s thoughts strayed to the long shady room at the Zuurberg, and to the silent companionship of the man whose presence she was missing more than she would have thought possible. And it was only a few hours since they had parted. There would follow many hours, many days, many weeks. She wondered whether she would miss him less as the days went by, or if this intolerable loneliness would grow. It was distressing to think that she might never see him again. She wondered also whether he missed her. She hoped he did. And then she fell to picturing him reverting perhaps to the old evening practice of drinking steadily, until finally he stumbled along the stoep on his way to bed... Surely not that! If her friendship counted for anything at all in his life its influence would linger with him and have some deterrent effect.
“Sling along the Adam’s ale, old girl,” said Jim at this point in her reverie. It was one of his boasts that he didn’t pour his money down his throat.