She could see Jem's wide shoulders pushing through the carriage door after Roddy. He had a gentle, reddish face and long, hanging moustaches like a dying Gladiator. Little eyes that screwed up to look at you. He would be good to Roddy.
It would be all right.
She stood still in the dark lane. A disturbing memory gnawed its way through her thoughts that covered it: the way Roddy had looked at Mamma, that Wednesday, the way he had spoken to her. "Oh wise. Oh right!"
That was because he believed she wanted him to go away. He couldn't believe that she really cared for him; that Mamma really cared for anybody but Mark; he couldn't believe that anybody cared for him.
"'Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell,
Rode the six hundred.'"
Roddy's chant pursued her up the lane.
The gate at the top fell to behind her. Moor grass showed grey among
black heather. She half saw, half felt her way along the sheep tracks.
There, where the edge of the round pit broke away, was the place where
Roddy had stopped suddenly in front of her.
"I wouldn't mind a bit if I hadn't been such a brute to little Mamma. Why are we such brutes to her?" He had turned in the narrow moor-track and faced her with his question: "Why?"
"'Forward, the Light Brigade!
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
Someone had blundered'"—
Hunderd—blundered. Did Tennyson really call hundred hunderd?