"There, there, my pet," she murmured softly.
Bobbie burst into a loud song. "He likes the noise of the train," smiled Mrs. Ogden, nodding her head.
They began to pet the bird. "Pretty Bob, pretty fellow!"
The canary loved them both, but Joan was his favourite; for her he would do almost anything. He bathed while she held his bath in her hands, and would dry himself on her short grey hair. At times Mrs. Ogden felt jealous of these marks of esteem. "I'm a perfect slave to that bird," she often complained, "and yet he won't come to me like that."
But her jealousy never got beyond an occasional grumble, the little canary managed to avoid being a bone of contention; Bobbie was a mutual tie, a veritable link of love between them.
At Barnstaple they changed again, and got into the small toy train that wanders over the moors to Lynton. The sun was setting across the wide, misty landscape, turning pools that the rain had left into molten gold, sending streams of glory earthward from behind the banked-up storm-clouds. Joan sat with Bobbie's cage on her knee; she might easily have put it down beside her, there was room on the seat, but she liked the nearness of the bird. She wished that he were big enough to take out and hug.
A great peace possessed her, one of those mysterious waves of well-being that came over her at times. "Feeling otherworldly," she described it to herself. Mrs. Ogden was dozing, so there was no one to talk; the small puffings and rumblings of the train alone broke the silence. She closed her eyes in sensuous enjoyment. The little bird shook out his feathers and cracked a seed, while the twilight deepened and the lamp flashed out in the carriage. Joan sat on in a kind of blissful quiescence. "All is as it should be," she thought dreamily, "and I know exactly why it is so, only I can't quite find the words. Somewhere at the back of my mind I know the why of everything."
3
On the second afternoon after their arrival, Joan sat alone in the hall of the hotel. Mrs. Ogden had gone to lie down; she had scarcely got over the fatigue of the journey. Joan picked up a paper idly; she had no wish to read the news, but since the paper was there she might as well glance through it. Two young girls with bobbed hair and well-tailored clothes had come on to the veranda from the garden.
One of them was in riding-breeches. They sat down with their backs to the open window, through which their voices drifted. "Have you seen that funny old thing with the short grey hair?"