"Were you the only child?"
"Yes. I wasn't much of a child, though! My mother died when I was very young, and I was taught a lot through that. The practice wasn't very good—very remunerative, that's to say—and if a girl's father isn't well off she becomes a woman early. If I had had a brother now——"
"If you had had a brother—what?"
"I was thinking it might have vmade a difference. Nothing particular. I don't suppose he'd have been of any monetary assistance; there wouldn't have been anything to give him a start with. But I should have liked a brother—one older than I am."
"You'd have made the right kind of man of him, I believe."
"I was thinking of what he'd have made of me. A brother must be such a help; a boy gets experience, and a girl has only instinct."
"It's a pretty good thing to go on with."
"It needs education, doctor, surely?"
"It needs educating by a mother. Half the women who have children are no more fit to be mothers than——And one comes across old maids with just the qualities! Fine material allowed to waste!"
The entrance to a cottage that they were passing stood open, and she could see into the parlour. There were teacups on the table, and a mug of wild flowers. On a garden-gate a child in a pink pinafore was slowly swinging. The brilliance of the day had subsided, and the town lay soft and yellow in the restfulness of sunset. A certain liquidity was assumed by the rugged street in the haze that hung over it; a touch of transparence gilded its flights of steps, the tiles of the house-tops, and the homely faces of the fisher-folk where they loitered before their doors. There a girl sat netting among the hollyhocks, withholding confession from the youth who lounged beside her, yet lifting at times to him a smile that had not been wakened by the net. The melody of the hour intensified the discord in the woman's soul.