“I always like the horned poppy,” she remarked, “it’s different from other flowers. You can’t imagine it growing in a garden, can you? I like that. I like things that are wild—things no one can imprison.”
She sighed heavily when she had said this and, turning her head away as they walked on, looked wearily across the water.
“Bank-holidays are days for the young,” she went on, after a pause. “The poor people look forward to them and I’m glad they do for they have a hard life. But you must have a young heart, Nance, a young heart to enjoy these things. I feel sometimes that we don’t live enough in other people’s happiness but it’s hard to do it when one gets older.”
She was silent again and then, as Nance glanced at her sympathetically, “I like Rodmoor because there are no grand people here and no motor-cars or noisy festivities. It’s a pleasure to see the poor enjoying themselves but the others, they make my head ache! They trouble me. I always think of Sodom and Gomorrah when I see them.”
“I suppose,” murmured the girl, “that they’re human beings and have their feelings, like the rest of us.”
A shadow of almost malignant bitterness crossed Mrs. Renshaw’s face.
“I can’t bear them! I can’t bear them!” she cried fiercely. “Those that laugh shall weep,” she added, looking at her companion’s prettily designed dress.
“Yes, I’m afraid happy people are often hard-hearted,” remarked Nance, anxious if possible to fall in with the other’s mood, but feeling decidedly uneasy. Mrs. Renshaw suddenly changed the conversation.
“I went over to see Rachel,” she said, “because I heard you had left her and were working in the shop.”
She took a deep breath and her voice trembled.