CHAPTER XII
"They confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims."
"Let's walk home," suggested Arthur, as they came out into the street. "It's such a ripping evening."
Elizabeth agreed, and they started off through the busy streets.
After weeks of dripping weather the frost had come, and had put a zest and a sparkle into life. In the brightly lit shops, as they passed, the shop-men were serving customers briskly, with quips and jokes for such as could appreciate badinage. Wives, bare-headed, or with tartan shawls, ran down from their stair-heads to get something tasty for their men's teas—a kipper, maybe, or a quarter of a pound of sausage, or a morsel of steak. Children were coming home from school; lights were lit and blinds were down—life in a big city is a cheery thing on a frosty November evening.
Elizabeth, generally so alive to everything that went on around her, walked wrapped in thought. Suddenly she said:
"I'm horribly sorry for Mrs. Donald. Inarticulate people suffer so much more than their noisy sisters. Other mothers say, 'Well, it must just have been to be: everything was done that could be done,' and comfort themselves with that. She says nothing, but looks at one with those suffering eyes. My dear little Peggy! No wonder her mother's heart is nearly broken."
Arthur murmured something sympathetic, and they walked on in silence, till he said:
"I want to ask you something. Don't answer unless you like, because it's frightful cheek on my part.... Do you really believe all that?"
"All what?"