"Maybe. But you don't. Nobody knows."
"Alfred wants him to be a girl."
"Do he? I wonders why."
"He said a little maid would traipse so nicely after you. I promised him to call her Lizzie. She'll be the next."
"Lizzie! Ah-h-h! Alferd be a good son. Fancy his thinkin' o' that. Lizzie——!"
She spoke the name almost under her breath. A moment later, she removed her spectacles, and wiped them. The two women were sitting in the kitchen by the hearth, after supper. A basket held the logs. The cradle was upstairs in Mrs. Yellam's room. In that room, despite Fancy's protests, Alfred's child would be born. In that room Susan Yellam's first baby had wailed his regret at finding himself in a wicked world. In that room her husband had died. Everything lay ready to hand; the monthly nurse lived only a quarter of a mile away; the doctor had been advised that he might be wanted at any minute.
Fancy loved to sit over the fire, listening to the wind talking to the chimney, telling that stay-at-home the tale of many wanderings. She liked to make-believe that the winds were real persons, although she had never heard of Æolus and his rebellious prisoners. She hated to pick flowers because they must feel so unhappy out of their own garden. Of course, they died of loneliness in mid-Victorian vases. She held inviolate her faith in fairies, beneficent and malevolent. She assured Mrs. Yellam that Solomon could see pixies dancing in their rings. How else could you account for his stopping in the middle of a field and barking?
Of her mother and the four Evangelists she said nothing.
Uncle and she became great friends.
Three days out of the week (as has been mentioned), from October to the end of January, Uncle served as "beater" to Captain Davenant, when that veteran went shooting in the New Forest. Returning home, about five, Uncle liked to wander into Mrs. Yellam's cottage and drink a cup of tea instead of marching up to the Pomfret Arms, where his supremacy as a talker and man of the world might be disputed by certain bagmen in that inn, which prided itself upon being "more class" than the Sir John Barleycorn. Fancy paid homage to Uncle, as the favourite brother of Mrs. Yellam, ministering to his love of creature comforts, making hot buttered toast and putting cream into his tea, which he never got at home. Whenever Jane happened to be "miffed" her husband tactically retreated to what he now termed "Fancy's rest camp." He found her alone there, because Mrs. Yellam was now on duty at Pomfret Court from two till seven. Fancy and Uncle would sit by the fire and talk.