'Yes!' A pause—then Nelly looked round, flushing.
'I can't talk to Bridget you see—about George—or the war. She just thinks the world's mad—that it's six to one and half a dozen to the other—that it doesn't matter at all who wins—so long of course as the Germans don't come here. And as for me, if I was so foolish as to marry a soldier in the middle of the war, why I must just take the consequences—grin and bear it!'
Her tone and look showed that in her clinging way she had begun to claim the woman beside her as a special friend, while Hester Martin's manner towards her bore witness that the claim excited a warm response—that intimacy and affection had advanced rapidly since George Sarratt's departure.
'Why do you put up with it?' said Miss Martin, sharply. 'Couldn't you get some cousin—some friend to stay with you?'
Nelly shook her head. 'George wanted me to. But I told him I couldn't.
It would mean a quarrel. I could never quarrel with Bridget.'
Miss Martin laughed indignantly. 'Why not—if she makes you miserable?'
'I don't know. I suppose I'm afraid of her. And besides'—the words came reluctantly—: 'she does a lot for me. I ought to be very grateful!'
Yes, Hester Martin did know that, in a sense, Bridget did 'a lot' for her younger sisters. It was not many weeks since she had made their acquaintance, but there had been time for her to see how curiously dependent young Mrs. Sarratt was on Miss Cookson. There was no real sympathy between them; nor could Miss Martin believe that there was ever much sense of kinship. But whenever there was anything to be done involving any friction with the outside world, Bridget was ready to do it, while Nelly invariably shrank from it.
For instance, some rather troublesome legal business connected with Nelly's marriage, and the reinvestment of a small sum of money, had descended on the young wife almost immediately after George's departure. She could hardly bring herself to look at the letter. What did it matter? Let their trustee settle it. To be worrying about it seemed to be somehow taking her mind from George—to be breaking in on that imaginative vision of him, and his life in the trenches, which while it tortured her, yet filled the blank of his absence. So Bridget did it all—corresponded peremptorily with their rather old and incompetent trustee, got all the signatures necessary out of Nelly, and carried the thing through. Again, on another and smaller occasion, Miss Martin had seen the two sisters confronted with a scandalous overcharge for the carriage of some heavy luggage from Manchester. Nelly was aghast; but she would have paid the sum demanded like a lamb, if Bridget had not stepped in—grappled with carter and railway company, while Nelly looked on, helpless but relieved.
It was clear that Nelly's inborn wish to be liked, her quivering responsiveness, together with a strong dose of natural indolence, made her hate disagreement or friction of any kind. She was always yielding—always ready to give in. But when Bridget in her harsh aggravating way fought things out and won, Nelly was indeed often made miserable, by the ricochet of the wrath roused by Bridget's methods upon herself; but she generally ended, all the same, by realising that Bridget had done her a service which she could not have done for herself.