‘I know they will not pass me,’ he said. ‘I know I am a crock’; but his voice was excited, and his eyes very bright. I knew that he hoped, in spite of what he said, that he might be taken.
All that afternoon while he was out at the Recruiting Office I sat indoors with Eleanor and tried to sew. It was a wet afternoon, and I could not face the heavy perambulator walk, pushing up hill to the Heath through the mud and rain.
I sat in the nursery with her, and she played on the floor. She had a cart on wheels that she pushed up and down, the wheels squeaked; I remembered that I had meant to oil them, but the oilcan was downstairs in the kitchen. I was too tired to go down and fetch it, and come back up all the stairs.
Eleanor made a great deal of noise; she upset chairs, and banged on the floor with bricks; she unwound reels of cotton, with which I was trying to sew; then she upset a bowl of flowers, and I had to go down to the bathroom and fetch a towel; and she screamed and screamed, though I had not scolded her at all. Her shrill, piping little voice pierced through my head like needles. I felt that I must scream or hit her, if she would not be quiet.
Then I thought:
‘How horrible that I should feel like this about my baby! I should not have believed, a year ago, that I could feel like this.’
At six o’clock, Walter came in.
I stood up and waited. I heard the front door slam, and then I heard him moving about in the hall. He opened the drawing-room door and looked in, and then I heard him coming up the stairs.
He opened the nursery door and stood still in the door way; and I stood still too, and looked at him.
There was an odd confused expression on his face that I could not make out. I did not know if he was glad or sorry; relieved or disappointed. He came in and threw a bunch of papers on the table in front of me.