‘Yes, it may have been. But there’ll be an answer to your last very soon.’
‘I don’t think so. Most likely I shall never hear again.’
And Nancy sat by the window of the front room, looking, as she had looked so many a time, at the lime tree opposite and the house visible through wet branches. A view unchanged since she could remember; recalling all her old ambitions, revolts, pretences, and ignorances; recalling her father, who from his grave still oppressed her living heart.
Somewhere near sounded the wailing shout of a dustman. It was like the voice of a soul condemned to purge itself in filth.
‘Mary!’ She rose up and went to the kitchen. ‘I can’t live here! It will kill me if I have to live in this dreadful place. Why, even you have been crying; I can see you have. If you give way, think what it must be to me!’
‘It’s only for a day or two, dear,’ answered Mary. ‘We shall feel at home again very soon. Miss. Morgan will come this evening, and perhaps your brother.’
‘I must do something. Give me some work.’
Mary could not but regard this as a healthy symptom, and she suggested tasks that called for moderate effort. Sick of reading—she had read through a whole circulating library in the past six months—Nancy bestirred herself about the house; but she avoided her father’s room.
Horace did not come to-day; a note arrived from him, saying that he would call early to-morrow morning. But at tea-time Jessica presented herself. She looked less ghostly than half a year ago; the grave illness through which she had passed seemed to have been helpful to her constitution. Yet she was noticeably changed. In her letters Nancy had remarked an excessive simplicity, a sort of childishness, very unlike Jessica’s previous way of writing; and the same peculiarity now appeared in her conversation. By turns she was mawkish and sprightly, tearful and giggling. Her dress, formerly neglected to the point of untidiness, betrayed a new-born taste for fashionable equipment; she suddenly drew attention to it in the midst of serious talk, asking with a bashful smirk whether Nancy thought it suited her.
‘I got it at Miss. French’s place—the Association, you know. It’s really wonderful how cheap things are there. And the very best cut, by dressmakers from Paris.’