“My dear! Don’t!”
“Oh! I am a beast to make you miserable. I didn’t mean to, darling. Between ourselves, I shan’t be sorry when it’s finished now. I’m ashamed of all the trouble I am to the nurses, though they don’t complain—me, that used to be so nippy on my feet and do everything for myself. I’m more trouble than a baby.... Well, you never know what you’ll come to, do you? My mother used to say, ‘You’re born, but you’re not buried.’ She had a bad time before she turned up her toes, poor old thing. I might be in a worse place than this. I might have been in one of those hospitals. Got a horror of hospitals myself.... I told them you’d have lunch out here with me. Here it comes.”
She waited until the servant had gone, then she leaned towards Claudia and said earnestly, “I want you to promise me something, Claudia.”
“Yes, Fay, what is it?”
“When I do the shuffle, you see that there are pars. in all the papers, with my photograph. You’re soon forgotten, but that’ll wake ’em up. The Girlie Girl’s got to have her farewell performance. I know I can trust you. I say, these peas remind me that Polly wants to see you about the kitchen-garden. She says the gardener is cheating us on the peas. Never seen anyone as sharp as she is now. She’ll count the pods every day soon. She loves it here.”
Claudia spent the day there, getting glimpses into strange ideas and modes of living, and arrived back at Wynnstay about six. Directly she got inside the house Lady Currey came out of the drawing-room in a very—for her—excited state.
“Oh, Claudia! what do you think? We’ve just heard that the strikers have become violent, and they are stoning the windows of the mills and the police are powerless to keep order. Poor John is nearly beside himself. I do hope he’ll take care, with the stones flying about.”
Claudia gave an exclamation of surprise.
“You don’t mean he has gone over to Langton?”
“Yes, he would go. He thought if he talked to them he might calm them. I’m sure I don’t know. It’s all very dreadful, something like the French Revolution. Oh, dear! Oh, dear!”