“And your personal expenses. What you waste.”
“What? I suppose I can’t spend a penny on myself?”
“Run along, Joan, and play.”
“Yes, Mummy.”
Then Uncle Jim, whose death they had waited for so long, died in France. Of fever or something. He had no child and had left all his money to “the poor fellow he’s a parson.” Lord, that joke. Father had seen it in the Evangelical Supplement and had used it for ever when he talked. However, things had become a bit easier then, and probably the spirit merchant had begun to give tick again.
Only one villager had been killed.
“And I said to them, I put it to them point-blank, ‘I won’t sign the minutes when no member of the Parochial Council comes to church,’ I said.”
What was there to get for to-morrow? Milk, more sardines, and some more candles. Perhaps that book Mrs. Donner had in her window for thruppence. She could put the thruppence down to the bread. The title was so thrilling, The Red Love of White Hope, Scioux, Matt.
She had not read many books in the old days. There was the Water Babies, and one or two others, but she had forgotten. And Robinson Crusoe. After that she hadn’t read at all. She didn’t really know what she had done. She had sat on the wall a good deal, asking why and how the world was here, and watching people go by. Silly to trouble about why the world was—it was, that was all. On Saturdays in summer dusty motor cars would clatter by on the way to the riverside pub. Birmingham people they were. There were other people sometimes. And four times a day the milk lorry came by with him driving it. Fascinating he was, he looked so wicked.
Was Scioux the name of a town, or did it mean that White Hope was a Red Indian? Mrs. Donner might let her have a look inside. If it was only a town she would not buy it, but with a Red Indian it should be meaty. Then, again, she used to go up to watch the village blacksmith shoe the horses or repair a plough, and he would let her work the handle of the bellows and make the sparks spray out. The corners of his forge had been wonderful, all sorts of odds and ends of rusty iron, and always the chance, as he said, of finding something very valuable among them. Little innocent. But above all there was the blacksmith himself. He was very stupid but the strongest man that ever lived. It was wonderful, his strength. She had tried to lift the big hammer one day, and she had let it drop on her big toe, it was so heavy. Wouldn’t be able to lift it now, even. He had had to carry her back to the Vicarage. Mother had been very angry. But then the days were gone when she kissed to make it well. Poor right big toe.