Ivy shook her head, and Mr. Sumption tried to disguise his pleasure at being the only one to hear.
“He’s a good boy, Jerry—never forgets his father. But he wants to see you though, Ivy. Maybe you’d come and have supper with us this evening?”
“I’m unaccountable sorry, but I’m going up to Senlac town.”
“That’s a pity. Perhaps you’ll come another day?”
“If I’ve time, Mus’ Sumption—but I’m justabout vrothered these days wud the harvesters here. Thank you kindly though, all the same.”
She had been sidling away as she spoke, and now walked off with a brisk “Good mornun.” She was sorry to have to disappoint Mr. Sumption, whom she liked and pitied; but there was no good letting him think she had any use for Jerry.
Before going home she ran down the drive to Little Worge, and told Polly Sinden she was at all costs and risks to come with her to Senlac that evening.
For the rest of the day she was less her cheery, placid self than usual, and the evening in Senlac town was not the treat it might have been. All the time she was haunted by a sense of Jerry’s nearness—perhaps he had come as far as Lewes by now, perhaps he was already in Sunday Street, perhaps in Senlac itself. What a fool she had been to tell Mr. Sumption where she was going! Her heart was troubled—another of those “queer” aspects of the situation which she so disliked. Generally when she wanted to get rid of a boy, she did not have feelings like these. All through the soft August twilight, when she and Polly Sinden, in the clumsy finery of country girls, strolled arm-in-arm up and down the Upper Lake and the Lower Lake—those two lakes of blood which an old, old war had made, giving the town its bloody name—and even afterwards, when having by arts known to themselves acquired two soldiers, they sat in the picture palace with a khaki arm round each tumbled muslin waist, even then the terror lingered, haunting, tearing, elusive as a dead leaf on the wind. Ivy looked nervously into the shadows of the little picture-hall, thinking she saw Jerry’s face, angry and swarthy, with eyes like the Forge at night.... Suppose he had come after her to Senlac ... he certainly would if he was home in time. Then came a picture of a girl who was “done in” by her lover. Ivy could stand it no more, and rising to her feet, plunged out over the people’s knees.