“Yes, I think I see what you mean,” she said, with significance in her tone.
Lady Cressage flushed, and released herself from her companion's arm. “But I don't know myself what I mean!” she exclaimed, despairingly, as she moved away. “I don't know!—I don't know!”
CHAPTER XIV
ON the last day of February, Mrs. Dabney was surprised if not exhilarated by a visit from her two children in the little book-shop.
“It's the last day in the world that I should have thought you'd 'a' come out on,” she told them, in salutation—and for comment they all glanced along the dark narrow alley of shelves to the street window. A gloomy spectacle it was indeed, with a cold rain slanting through the discredited remnants of a fog, which the east wind had broken up, but could not drive away, and with only now and again a passer-by moving across the dim vista, masked beneath an umbrella, or bent forward with chin buried in turned-up collar. In the doorway outside the sulky boy stamped his feet and slapped his sides with his arms in pantomimic mutiny against the task of guarding the book-stalls' dripping covers, which nobody would be mad enough to pause over, much less to lift.
“I don't know but I'd ought to let the boy bring in the books and go home,” she said, as their vague gaze was attracted by his gestures. “But it isn't three yet—it seems ridiculous to close up. Still, if you'd be more comfortable upstairs—”
“Why, mamma! The idea of making strangers of us,” protested Julia. She strove to make her tone cheerful, but its effect of rebuke was unmistakable.
The mother, leaning against the tall desk, looked blankly at her daughter. The pallid flicker of the gas-jet overhead made her long, listless face seem more devoid of colour than ever.
“But you are as good as strangers, aren't you?” she observed, coldly. “You've been back in town ten days and more, and I've scarcely laid eyes upon either of you. But don't you want to sit down? You can put those parcels on the floor anywhere. Or shall I do it for you?”