“Lemme sit down, my dear,” she said. “What with the ’eat and all this walkin’——Oh! what wouldn’t I give for a cup o’ tea!”
Millie got up sulkily and leaned against the wall. “I suppose they’ll let us stop here to-night, B.?” she asked.
“If we don’t make fools of ourselves,” replied Blanche, spitefully.
Mrs Gosling drooped. No inspiration had come to her as it had come to her daughter. The older woman had become too specialized. She swayed her head, searching—like some great larva dug up from its refuse heap—confused and feeble in this new strange place of light and air.
And as Blanche had repeated to herself “Everything’s different,” so Mrs Gosling seized a phrase and clung to it as to some explanation of this horrible perplexity. “I can’t understand it,” she said; “I can’t understand it!”
3
Aunt May appeared after a long interval—a thin, brown-faced woman of forty or so. She wore a very short skirt, a man’s jacket and an old deerstalker hat, and she carried a pitchfork. She must have brought the pitchfork as an emblem of authority, but she did not handle it as the other woman had handled her broomstick. The murderous pitchfork appeared little more deadly in her keeping than does the mace in the House of Commons, but as an emblem the pitchfork was infinitely more effective.
Aunt May’s questions were pertinent and searching, and after a few brief explanations had been offered to her she drove off the young woman, her niece, whom she addressed as “Allie,” to perform the many duties which were her share of the day’s work.
Allie went, laughing.