"He wants to go to India," said Madeline, mollified and inconsequent, and not realising that she lied. "He'll be a bishop one day, I expect."
Ethel looked envious, and rewarded her. "India!" she exclaimed, and sat down again for a minute or two. The girls fell to discussing Simla with a suburban imagination.
Mrs. Thornton had asked him "'Ow he liked Cambridge?" and Paul had replied at length. But she had gone off at last, and left him with the tall girl whose brown eyes had been alight with a flicker of amusement the while he had talked to her mother. They were standing near the platform at the top of the room, and a not yet opened "fishpond" with its appurtenances screened them slightly. He was able to look her full in the face now and realise how good she looked, though the little fur hat was slightly out of place there, and her coat a little shabby.
"Mother's a dear," she said.
He nodded. "I know. Edith, I've longed to see you again. Why weren't you at the Mission Hall on Sunday?"
"I couldn't go. I was ever so sorry."
"Really?"
She nodded. "I knew you were preaching. Mr. Derrick told us. But I had to stay and help mother with the kiddies."
Paul saw a mental vision of the little rooms over the shop and the three small Thornton children sprawling everywhere. Once or twice he had been in on business for the Society, and he knew it well. Edith in that setting had always puzzled him a little. She did not seem quite to belong to it, and yet she moved about household jobs with a quiet dignity that did not in the least suggest resentment or incongruity.
"You'll be here to-night?" he questioned.