Lady Fletcher was amused. "I declare, Cecilia," she said, "you think I am no more capable of taking care of that boy than of ruling a state!"
But Mrs. James did not smile in reply; the remark came too near to describing her actual state of mind.
"Well, Miriam, with four children of one's own, one may be expected to learn a thing or two; it isn't all as easy as it seems. Beside, I am fond of the boy; I suppose I may be excused for that ..."
"I can certainly excuse it; I am fond of him myself." Lady Fletcher was trying to conceal her irritation. Perhaps the suavity of her tone was a little overdone; at any rate, it only served to make Mrs. James' face a little rosier and her voice a little harder as she replied:
"I suppose you think, Miriam, that because I have four children of my own to fuss over, I might be expected to let the others alone, and I daresay you're right; but all that I know is, my heart isn't made that way. I have noticed you during these last weeks, and I am sure that you have felt as I say. But if you think that because I have four of my own to love, and therefore have less to give to those two motherless boys, you are mistaken. The more you have to love, the more you love each one of them, separately—not the less, as you might know if you had children of your own ..."
She stopped, unable to say any more. Her words were much more cruel than she intended them to be; that is, they fell much more cruelly than she meant them to on Lady Fletcher's ears. She had no idea, of course, of the deep though vain yearning for offspring of her own that filled her sister-in-law's bosom; Miriam could not possibly have expressed this, the deepest and most tragic thing in her life, to Cecilia. She was made that way. The more poignantly she felt what she had missed, the more determinedly she concealed every trace of her feeling from the outside world.
So it was now. Every ounce of feeling in her flared for a moment into hate; the hate of the childless woman for the mother. The flame fell after a second or two, of course, and she was able to reply, unsmilingly and coldly:
"I think that Harry will be as well treated by me as you could wish, Cecilia."
Mother love, nothing else, was responsible for all the hardness and bitterness in her tone. But Mrs. James knew nothing of this; she only felt the hardness and bitterness and judged the speaker accordingly.
That was all. The quarrel, if such it could be called, died down as quickly as it had flared up, for it was impossible for these two well-bred ladies to fall out and fight like fishwives. Lady Fletcher's last remark made further discussion of the subject, or any other subject, for the time being, impossible, and after a minute the two rose by tacit consent and went out to find the others.