“Good heavens, no! Marry a man with a temper like that? Quelle vie!—no, I wasn’t talking to you, love!” as the spaniel sat up and barked. “But I’m used to being engaged to Pinto, and one misses it—besides, it’s a sort of protection now I’m at the War Office. My dears, just listen....”
They listened for about twenty minutes. And then Gillian said she might as well be suitably employed during the entertainment; and darted into the adjoining bedroom, whence she returned with an enormous pile of snowy but ragged underclothing and a cigar-box full of cottons.
And then even Zoe was silent and attentive before the spectacle of Gillian sewing. She had no scissors and no thimble, so she jabbed the needle on her knee to prick it through the more resisting portions of material or lace, and left a length of thread hanging or else pulled at it—and pulled out the previous ten minutes’ toil. She held her needle poised over an exquisite bit of embroidery, like a spade over a potato allotment—and then dug at it with grim energy. And she sighed and she swore and she struggled, and assaulted the tatters of fine lawn and crêpe-de-chine, till Antonia was moved to exclaim: “And these are the fingers that are noted for the most delicate experimental work in the entire Institute——”
Gillian spread out and ruefully surveyed the ten pricked and discoloured victims of her combined career as a woman and a professor of scientific research.
“One can’t always be getting fresh underwear. It’s such a fag. These were very expensive when I bought them; it’s not so long ago—but I can never feel I’m in harmony with this sort of work. It’s got to be done, though,” and she thrust the eye of the needle anew towards the thread poised in her other hand.
Nell had been taught by her mother to sew beautifully, and sat wishing bashfully she had the courage to tender her gift at Gillian’s shrine. She was, however, unable to articulate her ardent desire; and Winnie, whose plain purport in the house was solely to spare Gillian the present endurances, sat likewise passively watching the warfare in which the animate seemed likely to be defeated by the inanimate; advising at last: “Try holding them a different way, Jill. No, not the needle—them”
“Like this?” Gillian made an awkward bunch of the material in her fist. “But it feels all wrong now.”
“Better give it up, Jill—throw it over to Winnie, she’ll do it for you.”
Winifred disregarded the hint. And Nell opened impulsive lips, made a sound in her throat, and thickened again to silence.
“I won’t give up”—putting in stitches that were like a giant straddling from one edge of the rent to the other. “It’s a nuisance, but I’ve got to learn,” ferociously obstinate.