it may be done enough. But that in any case the so-called gravy will be grey hot water."
"Get up and come along, and don't be a mad kitten! I shall go and leave you two behind. So now you know." And Rosalind goes away up the shingle.
"What makes mother look so serious sometimes, kitten? She did just now."
"She's jealous of you and me flirting like we do. Don't put your hat on; let the sun dry you up a bit. Does she really look serious though? Do you mean it?"
"Yes, I mean it. It comes and goes. But when I ask her she only laughs at me." A painful thought crosses Sally's mind. Is it possible that some of her reckless escapades have froissé'd her mother? She goes off into a moment's contemplation, then suddenly jumps up with, "Come along, Jeremiah," and follows her up the beach.
But the gravity on the face of the latter, by now half-way to the house, had nothing to do with any of Sally's shocking vulgarities and outrageous utterances. No, nor even with the green-eyed monster Jealousy her unscrupulous effrontery had not hesitated to impute. She allowed it to dominate her expression, as there was no one there to see, until the girl overtook her. Then she wrenched her face and her thoughts apart with a smile. "You are a mad little goose," said she.
But the thing that weighted her mind—oppressed or puzzled her, as might be—what was it?
Had she been obliged to answer the question off-hand she herself might have been at a loss to word it, though she knew quite well what it was. It was the old clash between the cause of Sally and its result. It was the thought that, but for a memory that every year seemed to call for a stronger forgetfulness, a more effective oblivion, this little warm star that had shone upon and thawed a frozen life, this salve for the wound it sprang from, would have remained unborn—a nonentity! Yes, she might have had another child—true! But would that child have been Sally?
She was so engrossed with her husband, and he with her, that she felt she could, as it were, have trusted him with his own identity. But, then, how about Sally? Though she might with time
show him the need for concealment, how be sure that nothing should come out in the very confusion of the springing of the mine? She could trust him with his identity—yes! Not Sally with hers. Her great surpassing terror was—do you see?—not the effect on him of learning about Sally's strange provenance, but for Sally herself. The terrible knowledge she could not grasp the facts without would cast a shadow over her whole life.