“Very likely,” she replied, decisively. “It will be better, perhaps, that they should not. I am sure that whatever they do will be quite right.”
“Of course, Miss Catharine, but I shall be sorry. I wish my bedroom could have been built up again between the old walls. In that bedroom you saved my life.”
“Rubbish! Even suppose I had done it, as you say, I should have done just the same for my silkworms, and then, somehow when I do a thing on a sudden like that, I always feel as if I had not done it. I am sure I didn’t do it.”
The last few words were spoken in a strangely different tone, much softer and sweeter.
“I don’t quite understand.”
“I mean,” said Catharine, speaking slowly, as if half surprised at what had occurred to her, and half lost in looking at it—“I mean that I do not a bit reflect at such times upon what I do. It is as if something or somebody took hold of me, and, before I know where I am, the thing is done, and yet there is no something nor somebody—at least, so far as I can see. It is wonderful, for after all it is I who do it.”
Tom looked intently at her. She seemed to be taking no notice of him and to be talking to herself. He had never seen her in that mood before, although he had often seen her abstracted and heedless of what was passing. In a few moments she recovered herself, and the usual everyday accent returned with an added hardness.
“Here we are at Chapel Farm. Mind you say nothing to father or mother; it will only frighten them.”
Mrs. Bellamy came to the gate.
“Lor’ bless the child! wherever have you been!”