Produced by Suzanne Shell, Beth Trapaga and PG Distributed Proofreaders

MARY OLIVIER:

A LIFE

BY

MAY SINCLAIR

1919

CONTENTS

BOOK ONE INFANCY (1865-1869)

BOOK TWO CHILDHOOD (1869-1875)

BOOK THREE ADOLESCENCE (1876-1879)

BOOK FOUR MATURITY (1879-1900)

BOOK FIVE MIDDLE AGE (1900-1910)

BOOK ONE INFANCY (1865-1869)

I

I.

The curtain of the big bed hung down beside the cot.

When old Jenny shook it the wooden rings rattled on the pole and grey men with pointed heads and squat, bulging bodies came out of the folds on to the flat green ground. If you looked at them they turned into squab faces smeared with green.

Every night, when Jenny had gone away with the doll and the donkey, you hunched up the blanket and the stiff white counterpane to hide the curtain and you played with the knob in the green painted iron railing of the cot. It stuck out close to your face, winking and grinning at you in a friendly way. You poked it till it left off and turned grey and went back into the railing. Then you had to feel for it with your finger. It fitted the hollow of your hand, cool and hard, with a blunt nose that pushed agreeably into the palm.

In the dark you could go tip-finger along the slender, lashing flourishes of the ironwork. By stretching your arm out tight you could reach the curlykew at the end. The short, steep flourish took you to the top of the railing and on behind your head.

Tip-fingering backwards that way you got into the grey lane where the prickly stones were and the hedge of little biting trees. When the door in the hedge opened you saw the man in the night-shirt. He had only half a face. From his nose and his cheek-bones downwards his beard hung straight like a dark cloth. You opened your mouth, but before you could scream you were back in the cot; the room was light; the green knob winked and grinned at you from the railing, and behind the curtain Papa and Mamma were lying in the big bed.

One night she came back out of the lane as the door in the hedge was opening. The man stood in the room by the washstand, scratching his long thigh. He was turned slantwise from the nightlight on the washstand so that it showed his yellowish skin under the lifted shirt. The white half-face hung by itself on the darkness. When he left off scratching and moved towards the cot she screamed.

Mamma took her into the big bed. She curled up there under the shelter of the raised hip and shoulder. Mamma's face was dry and warm and smelt sweet like Jenny's powder-puff. Mamma's mouth moved over her wet cheeks, nipping her tears.

Her cry changed to a whimper and a soft, ebbing sob.

Mamma's breast: a smooth, cool, round thing that hung to your hands and slipped from them when they tried to hold it. You could feel the little ridges of the stiff nipple as your finger pushed it back into the breast.

Her sobs shook in her throat and ceased suddenly.

II.

The big white globes hung in a ring above the dinner table. At first, when she came into the room, carried high in Jenny's arms, she could see nothing but the hanging, shining globes. Each had a light inside it that made it shine.

Mamma was sitting at the far end of the table. Her face and neck shone white above the pile of oranges on the dark blue dish. She was dipping her fingers in a dark blue glass bowl.

When Mary saw her she strained towards her, leaning dangerously out of Jenny's arms. Old Jenny said "Tchit-tchit!" and made her arms tight and hard and put her on Papa's knee.

Papa sat up, broad and tall above the table, all by himself. He was dressed in black. One long brown beard hung down in front of him and one short beard covered his mouth. You knew he was smiling because his cheeks swelled high up his face so that his eyes were squeezed into narrow, shining slits. When they came out again you saw scarlet specks and smears in their corners.

Papa's big white hand was on the table, holding a glass filled with some red stuff that was both dark and shining and had a queer, sharp smell.

"Porty-worty winey-piney," said Papa.

The same queer, sharp smell came from between his two beards when he spoke.

Mark was sitting up beside Mamma a long way off. She could see them looking at each other. Roddy and Dank were with them.

They were making flowers out of orange peel and floating them in the finger bowls. Mamma's fingers were blue and sharp-pointed in the water behind the dark blue glass of her bowl. The floating orange-peel flowers were blue. She could see Mamma smiling as she stirred them about with the tips of her blue fingers.

Her underlip pouted and shook. She didn't want to sit by herself on
Papa's knee. She wanted to sit in Mamma's lap beside Mark. She wanted
Mark to make orange-peel flowers for her. She wanted Mamma to look
down at her and smile.

Papa was spreading butter on biscuit and powdered sugar on the butter.

"Sugary—Buttery—Bippery," said Papa.

She shook her head. "I want to go to Mamma. I want to go to Mark."

She pushed away the biscuit. "No. No. Mamma give Mary. Mark give
Mary."

"Drinky—winky," said Papa.

He put his glass to her shaking mouth. She turned her head away, and he took it between his thumb and finger and turned it back again. Her neck moved stiffly. Her head felt small and brittle under the weight and pinch of the big hand. The smell and the sour, burning taste of the wine made her cry.

"Don't tease Baby, Emilius," said Mamma.

"I never tease anybody."

He lifted her up. She could feel her body swell and tighten under the bands and drawstrings of her clothes, as she struggled and choked, straining against the immense clamp of his arms. When his wet red lips pushed out between his beards to kiss her she kicked. Her toes drummed against something stiff and thin that gave way and sprang out again with a cracking and popping sound.

He put her on the floor. She stood there all by herself, crying, till
Mark came and took her by the hand.

"Naughty Baby. Naughty Mary," said Mamma. "Don't kiss her, Mark."

"No, Mamma."

He knelt on the floor beside her and smiled into her face and wiped it with his pocket-handkerchief. She put out her mouth and kissed him and stopped crying.

"Jenny must come," Mamma said, "and take Mary away."

"No. Mark take Mary."

"Let the little beast take her," said Papa. "If he does he shan't come back again. Do you hear that, sir?"

Mark said, "Yes, Papa."

They went out of the room hand in hand. He carried her upstairs pickaback. As they went she rested her chin on the nape of his neck where his brown hair thinned off into shiny, golden down.

III.

Old Jenny sat in the rocking-chair by the fireguard in the nursery. She wore a black net cap with purple rosettes above her ears. You could look through the black net and see the top of her head laid out in stripes of grey hair and pinky skin.

She had a grey face, flattened and wide-open like her eyes. She held it tilted slightly backwards out of your way, and seemed to be always staring at something just above your head. Jenny's face had tiny creases and crinkles all over it. When you kissed it you could feel the loose flesh crumpling and sliding softly over the bone. There was always about her a faint smell of sour milk.

No use trying to talk to Jenny. She was too tired to listen. You climbed on to her lap and stroked her face, and said "Poor Jenny. Dear Jenny. Poor Jenny-Wee so tired," and her face shut up and went to sleep. Her broad flat nose drooped; her eyelids drooped; her long, grey bands of hair drooped; she was like the white donkey that lived in the back lane and slept standing on three legs with his ears lying down.

Mary loved old Jenny next to Mamma and Mark; and she loved the white donkey. She wondered why Jenny was always cross when you stroked her grey face and called her "Donkey-Jenny." It was not as if she minded being stroked; because when Mark or Dank did it her face woke up suddenly and smoothed out its creases. And when Roddy climbed up with his long legs into her lap she hugged him tight and rocked him, singing Mamma's song, and called him her baby.

He wasn't. She was the baby; and while you were the baby you could sit in people's laps. But old Jenny didn't want her to be the baby.

The nursery had shiny, slippery yellow walls and a brown floor, and a black hearthrug with a centre of brown and yellow flowers. The greyish chintz curtains were spotted with small brown leaves and crimson berries. There were dark-brown cupboards and chests of drawers, and chairs that were brown frames for the yellow network of the cane. Soft bits of you squeezed through the holes and came out on the other side. That hurt and made a red pattern on you where you sat down.

The tall green fireguard was a cage. When Jenny poked the fire you peeped through and saw it fluttering inside. If you sat still you could sometimes hear it say "teck-teck," and sometimes the fire would fly out suddenly with a soft hiss.

High above your head you could just see the gleaming edge of the brass rail.

"Jenny—where's yesterday and where's to-morrow?"

IV.

When you had run a thousand hundred times round the table you came to the blue house. It stood behind Jenny's rocking-chair, where Jenny couldn't see it, in a blue garden. The walls and ceilings were blue; the doors and staircases were blue; everything in all the rooms was blue.

Mary ran round and round. She loved the padding of her feet on the floor and the sound of her sing-song:

"The pussies are blue, the beds are blue, the matches are blue and the mousetraps and all the litty mouses!"

Mamma was always there dressed in a blue gown; and Jenny was there, all in blue, with a blue cap; and Mark and Dank and Roddy were there, all in blue. But Papa was not allowed in the blue house.

Mamma came in and looked at her as she ran. She stood in the doorway with her finger on her mouth, and she was smiling. Her brown hair was parted in two sleek bands, looped and puffed out softly round her ears, and plaited in one plait that stood up on its edge above her forehead. She wore a wide brown silk gown with falling sleeves.

"Pretty Mamma," said Mary. "In a blue dress."

V.

Every morning Mark and Dank and Roddy knocked at Mamma's door, and if Papa was there he called out, "Go away, you little beasts!" If he was not there she said, "Come in, darlings!" and they climbed up the big bed into Papa's place and said "Good morning, Mamma!"

When Papa was away the lifted curtain spread like a tent over Mary's cot, shutting her in with Mamma. When he was there the drawn curtain hung straight down from the head of the bed.

II

I.

White patterns on the window, sharp spikes, feathers, sprigs with furled edges, stuck flat on to the glass; white webs, crinkled like the skin of boiled milk, stretched across the corner of the pane; crisp, sticky stuff that bit your fingers.

Out of doors, black twigs thickened with a white fur; white powder sprinkled over the garden walk. The white, ruffled grass stood out stiffly and gave under your feet with a pleasant crunching. The air smelt good; you opened your mouth and drank it in gulps. It went down like cold, tingling water.

Frost.

You saw the sun for the first time, a red ball that hung by itself on the yellowish white sky. Mamma said, "Yes, of course it would fall if God wasn't there to hold it up in his hands."

Supposing God dropped the sun—

II.

The yellowish white sky had come close up to the house, a dirty blanket let down outside the window. The tree made a black pattern on it. Clear glass beads hung in a row from the black branch, each black twig was tipped with a glass bead. When Jenny opened the window there was a queer cold smell like the smell of the black water in the butt.

Thin white powder fluttered out of the blanket and fell. A thick powder. A white fluff that piled itself in a ridge on the window-sill and curved softly in the corner of the sash. It was cold, and melted on your tongue with a taste of window-pane.

In the garden Mark and Dank and Roddy were making the snow man.

Mamma stood at the nursery window with her back to the room. She called to Mary to come and look at the snow man.

Mary was tired of the snow man. She was making a tower with Roddy's bricks while Roddy wasn't there. She had to build it quick before he could come back and take his bricks away, and the quicker you built it the sooner it fell down. Mamma was not to look until it was finished.

"Look—look, Mamma! M-m-mary's m-m-made a tar. And it's not falled down!"

The tower reached above Jenny's knee.

"Come and look, Mamma—" But Mamma wouldn't even turn her head.

"I'm looking at the snow man," she said.

Something swelled up, hot and tight, in Mary's body and in her face. She had a big bursting face and a big bursting body. She struck the tower, and it fell down. Her violence made her feel light and small again and happy.

"Where's the tower, Mary?" said Mamma.

"There isn't any tar. I've knocked it down. It was a nashty tar."

III.

Aunt Charlotte—

Aunt Charlotte had sent the Isle of Skye terrier to Dank.

There was a picture of Aunt Charlotte in Mamma's Album. She stood on a strip of carpet, supported by the hoops of her crinoline; her black lace shawl made a pattern on the light gown. She wore a little hat with a white sweeping feather, and under the hat two long black curls hung down straight on each shoulder.

The other people in the Album were sulky, and wouldn't look at you. The gentlemen made cross faces at somebody who wasn't there; the ladies hung their heads and looked down at their crinolines. Aunt Charlotte hung her head too, but her eyes, tilted up straight under her forehead, pointed at you. And between her stiff black curls she was smiling—smiling. When Mamma came to Aunt Charlotte's picture she tried to turn over the page of the Album quick.

Aunt Charlotte sent things. She sent the fat valentine with the lace paper border and black letters printed on sweet-smelling white satin that Papa threw into the fire, and the white china doll with black hair and blue eyes and no clothes on that Jenny hid in the nursery cupboard.

The Skye terrier brought a message tied under his chin: "Tib. For my dear little nephew Dan with Aunt Charlotte's fond love." He had high-peaked, tufted ears and a blackish grey coat that trailed on the floor like a shawl that was too big for him. When you tried to stroke him the shawl swept and trailed away under the table. You saw nothing but shawl and ears until Papa began to tease Tib. Papa snapped his finger and thumb at him, and Tib showed little angry eyes and white teeth set in a black snarl.

Mamma said, "Please don't do that again, Emilius."

And Papa did it again.

IV.

"What are you looking at, Master Daniel?" said Jenny.

"Nothing."

"Then what are you looking like that for? You didn't ought to."

Papa had sent Mark and Dank to the nursery in disgrace. Mark leaned over the back of Jenny's chair and rocked her. His face was red but tight; and as he rocked he smiled because of his punishment.

Dank lay on the floor on his stomach, his shoulders hunched, raised on his elbows, his chin supported by his clenched fists. He was a dark and white boy with dusty eyelashes and rough, doggy hair. He had puckered up his mouth and made it small; under the scowl of his twisted eyebrows he was looking at nothing.

"It's no worse for you than it is for Master Mark," said Jenny.

"Isn't it? Tib was my dog. If he hadn't been my dog Papa wouldn't have teased him, and Mamma wouldn't have sent him back to Aunt Charlotte, and Aunt Charlotte wouldn't have let him be run over."

"Yes. But what did you say to your Papa?"

"I said I wish Tib had bitten him. So I do. And Mark said it would have served him jolly well right."

"So it would," said Mark.

Roddy had turned his back on them. Nobody was taking any notice of him; so he sang aloud to himself the song he was forbidden to sing:

"John Brown's body lies a-rotting in his grave,
John Brown's body lies a-rotting in his grave—"

The song seemed to burst out of Roddy's beautiful white face; his pink lips twirled and tilted; his golden curls bobbed and nodded to the tune.

"John Brown's body lies a-rotting in his grave,
As we go marching on!"

"When I grow up," said Dank, "I'll kill Papa for killing Tibby. I'll bore holes in his face with Mark's gimlet. I'll cut pieces out of him. I'll get the matches and set fire to his beard. I'll—I'll hurt him."

"I don't think I shall," said Mark. "But if I do I shan't kick up a silly row about it first."

"It's all very well for you. You'd kick up a row if Tibby was your dog."

Mary had forgotten Tibby. Now she remembered.

"Where's Tibby? I want him."

"Tibby's dead," said Jenny.

"What's 'dead'?"

"Never you mind."

Roddy was singing:

"'And from his nose and to his chin
The worms crawled out and the worms crawled in'—

"That's dead," said Roddy.

V.

You never knew when Aunt Charlotte mightn't send something. She forgot your birthday and sometimes Christmas; but, to make up for that, she remembered in between. Every time she was going to be married she remembered.

Sarah the cat came too long after Mark's twelfth birthday to be his birthday present. There was no message with her except that Aunt Charlotte was going to be married and didn't want her any more. Whenever Aunt Charlotte was going to be married she sent you something she didn't want.

Sarah was a white cat with a pink nose and pink lips and pink pads under her paws. Her tabby hood came down in a peak between her green eyes. Her tabby cape went on along the back of her tail, tapering to the tip. Sarah crouched against the fireguard, her haunches raised, her head sunk back on her shoulders, and her paws tucked in under her white, pouting breast.

Mark stooped over her; his mouth smiled its small, firm smile; his eyes shone as he stroked her. Sarah raised her haunches under the caressing hand.

Mary's body was still. Something stirred and tightened in it when she looked at Sarah.

"I want Sarah," she said.

"You can't have her," said Jenny. "She's Master Mark's cat."

She wanted her more than Roddy's bricks and Dank's animal book or Mark's soldiers. She trembled when she held her in her arms and kissed her and smelt the warm, sweet, sleepy smell that came from the top of her head.

"Little girls can't have everything they want," said Jenny.

"I wanted her before you did," said Dank. "You're too little to have a cat at all."

He sat on the table swinging his legs. His dark, mournful eyes watched
Mark under their doggy scowl. He looked like Tibby, the terrier that
Mamma sent away because Papa teased him.

"Sarah isn't your cat either, Master Daniel. Your Aunt Charlotte gave her to your Mamma, and your Mamma gave her to Master Mark."

"She ought to have given her to me. She took my dog away."

"I gave her to you," said Mark.

"And I gave her to you back again."

"Well then, she's half our cat."

"I want her," said Mary. She said it again and again.

Mamma came and took her into the room with the big bed.

The gas blazed in the white globes. Lovely white lights washed like water over the polished yellow furniture: the bed, the great high wardrobe, the chests of drawers, the twisted poles of the looking-glass. There were soft rounds and edges of blond light on the white marble chimney-piece and the white marble washstand. The drawn curtains were covered with shining silver patterns on a sleek green ground that shone. All these things showed again in the long, flashing mirrors.

Mary looked round the room and wondered why the squat grey men had gone out of the curtains.

"Don't look about you," said Mamma. "Look at me. Why do you want
Sarah?"

She had forgotten Sarah.

"Because," she said, "Sarah is so sweet."

"Mamma gave Sarah to Mark. Mary mustn't want what isn't given her. Mark doesn't say, 'I want Mary's dollies.' Papa doesn't say, 'I want Mamma's workbox.'"

"But I want Sarah."

"And that's selfish and self-willed."

Mamma sat down on the low chair at the foot of the bed.

"God," she said, "hates selfishness and self-will. God is grieved every time Mary is self-willed and selfish. He wants her to give up her will."

When Mamma talked about God she took you on her lap and you played with the gold tassel on her watch chain. Her face was solemn and tender. She spoke softly. She was afraid that God might hear her talking about him and wouldn't like it.

Mary knelt in Mamma's lap and said "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild," and "Our Father," and played with the gold tassel. Every day began and ended with "Our Father" and "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild."

"What's hallowed?"

"Holy," said Mamma. "What God is. Sacred and holy."

Mary twisted the gold tassel and made it dance and run through the loop of the chain. Mamma took it out of her hands and pressed them together and stooped her head to them and kissed them. She could feel the kiss tingling through her body from her finger-tips, and she was suddenly docile and appeased.

When she lay in her cot behind the curtain she prayed: "Please God keep me from wanting Sarah."

In the morning she remembered. When she looked at Sarah she thought:
"Sarah is Mark's cat and Dank's cat."

She touched her with the tips of her fingers. Sarah's eyes were reproachful and unhappy. She ran away and crept under the chest of drawers.

"Mamma gave Sarah to Mark."

Mamma was sacred and holy. Mark was sacred and holy. Sarah was sacred and holy, crouching under the chest of drawers with her eyes gleaming in the darkness.

VI.

It was a good and happy day.

She lay on the big bed. Her head rested on Mamma's arm. Mamma's face was close to her. Water trickled into her eyes out of the wet pad of pocket-handkerchief. Under the cold pad a hot, grinding pain came from the hole in her forehead. Jenny stood beside the bed. Her face had waked up and she was busy squeezing something out of a red sponge into a basin of pink water.

When Mamma pressed the pocket-handkerchief tight the pain ground harder, when she loosened it blood ran out of the hole and the pocket-handkerchief was warm again. Then Jenny put on the sponge.

She could hear Jenny say, "It was the Master's fault. She didn't ought to have been left in the room with him."

She remembered. The dining-room and the sharp spike on the fender and Papa's legs stretched out. He had told her not to run so fast and she had run faster and faster. It wasn't Papa's fault.

She remembered tripping over Papa's legs. Then falling on the spike.
Then nothing.

Then waking in Mamma's room.

She wasn't crying. The pain made her feel good and happy; and Mamma was calling her her darling and her little lamb. Mamma loved her. Jenny loved her.

Mark and Dank and Roddy came in. Mark carried Sarah in his arms. They stood by the bed and looked at her; their faces pressed close. Roddy had been crying; but Mark and Dank were excited. They climbed on to the bed and kissed her. They made Sarah crouch down close beside her and held her there. They spoke very fast, one after the other.

"We've brought you Sarah."

"We've given you Sarah."

"She's your cat."

"To keep for ever."

She was glad that she had tripped over Papa's legs. It was a good and happy day.

VII.

The sun shone. The polished green blades of the grass glittered. The gravel walk and the nasturtium bed together made a broad orange blaze. Specks like glass sparkled in the hot grey earth. On the grey flagstone the red poppy you picked yesterday was a black thread, a purple stain.

She was happy sitting on the grass, drawing the fine, sharp blades between her fingers, sniffing the smell of the mignonette that tingled like sweet pepper, opening and shutting the yellow mouths of the snap-dragon.

The garden flowers stood still, straight up in the grey earth. They were as tall as you were. You could look at them a long time without being tired.

The garden flowers were not like the animals. The cat Sarah bumped her sleek head under your chin; you could feel her purr throbbing under her ribs and crackling in her throat. The white rabbit pushed out his nose to you and drew it in again, quivering, and breathed his sweet breath into your mouth.

The garden flowers wouldn't let you love them. They stood still in their beauty, quiet, arrogant, reproachful. They put you in the wrong. When you stroked them they shook and swayed from you; when you held them tight their heads dropped, their backs broke, they shrivelled up in your hands. All the flowers in the garden were Mamma's; they were sacred and holy.

You loved best the flowers that you stooped down to look at and the flowers that were not Mamma's: the small crumpled poppy by the edge of the field, and the ears of the wild rye that ran up your sleeve and tickled you, and the speedwell, striped like the blue eyes of Meta, the wax doll.

When you smelt mignonette you thought of Mamma.

It was her birthday. Mark had given her a little sumach tree in a red pot. They took it out of the pot and dug a hole by the front door steps outside the pantry window and planted it there.

Papa came out on to the steps and watched them.

"I suppose," he said, "you think it'll grow?"

Mamma never turned to look at him. She smiled because it was her birthday. She said, "Of course it'll grow."

She spread out its roots and pressed it down and padded up the earth about it with her hands. It held out its tiny branches, stiffly, like a toy tree, standing no higher than the mignonette. Papa looked at Mamma and Mark, busy and happy with their heads together, taking no notice of him. He laughed out of his big beard and went back into the house suddenly and slammed the door. You knew that he disliked the sumach tree and that he was angry with Mark for giving it to Mamma.

When you smelt mignonette you thought of Mamma and Mark and the sumach tree, and Papa standing on the steps, and the queer laugh that came out of his beard.

When it rained you were naughty and unhappy because you couldn't go out of doors. Then Mamma stood at the window and looked into the front garden. She smiled at the rain. She said, "It will be good for my sumach tree."

Every day you went out on to the steps to see if the sumach tree had grown.

VIII.

The white lamb stood on the table beside her cot.

Mamma put it there every night so that she could see it first thing in the morning when she woke.

She had had a birthday. Suddenly in the middle of the night she was five years old.

She had kept on waking up with the excitement of it. Then, in the dark twilight of the room, she had seen a bulky thing inside the cot, leaning up against the rail. It stuck out queerly and its weight dragged the counterpane tight over her feet.

The birthday present. What she saw was not its real shape. When she poked it, stiff paper bent in and crackled; and she could feel something big and solid underneath. She lay quiet and happy, trying to guess what it could be, and fell asleep again.

It was the white lamb. It stood on a green stand. It smelt of dried hay and gum and paint like the other toy animals, but its white coat had a dull, woolly smell, and that was the real smell of the lamb. Its large, slanting eyes stared off over its ears into the far corners of the room, so that it never looked at you. This made her feel sometimes that the lamb didn't love her, and sometimes that it was frightened and wanted to be comforted.

She trembled when first she stroked it and held it to her face, and sniffed its lamby smell.

Papa looked down at her. He was smiling; and when she looked up at him she was not afraid. She had the same feeling that came sometimes when she sat in Mamma's lap and Mamma talked about God and Jesus. Papa was sacred and holy.

He had given her the lamb.

It was the end of her birthday; Mamma and Jenny were putting her to bed. She felt weak and tired, and sad because it was all over.

"Come to that," said Jenny, "your birthday was over at five minutes past twelve this morning."

"When will it come again?"

"Not for a whole year," said Mamma.

"I wish it would come to-morrow."

Mamma shook her head at her. "You want to be spoiled and petted every day."

"No. No. I want—I want—"

"She doesn't know what she wants," said Jenny.

"Yes. I do. I do."

"Well—"

"I want to love Papa every day. 'Cause he gave me my lamb."

"Oh," said Mamma, "if you only love people because they give you birthday presents—"

"But I don't—I don't—really and truly—"

"You didn't ought to have no more birthdays," said Jenny, "if they make you cry."

Why couldn't they see that crying meant that she wanted Papa to be sacred and holy every day?

The day after the birthday when Papa went about the same as ever, looking big and frightening, when he "Baa'd" into her face and called out, "Mary had a little lamb!" and "Mary, Mary, quite contrary," she looked after him sorrowfully and thought: "Papa gave me my lamb."

IX.

One day Uncle Edward and Aunt Bella came over from Chadwell Grange. They were talking to Mamma a long time in the drawing-room, and when she came in they stopped and whispered.

Roddy told her the secret. Uncle Edward was going to give her a live lamb.

Mark and Dank said it couldn't be true. Uncle Edward was not a real uncle; he was only Aunt Bella's husband, and he never gave you anything. And anyhow the lamb wasn't born yet and couldn't come for weeks and weeks.

Every morning she asked, "Has my new lamb come? When is it coming? Do you think it will come to-day?"

She could keep on sitting still quite a long time by merely thinking about the new lamb. It would run beside her when she played in the garden. It would eat grass out of her hand. She would tie a ribbon round its neck and lead it up and down the lane. At these moments she forgot the toy lamb. It stood on the chest of drawers in the nursery, looking off into the corners of the room, neglected.

By the time Uncle Edward and Aunt Bella sent for her to come and see the lamb, she knew exactly what it would be like and what would happen. She saw it looking like the lambs in the Bible Picture Book, fat, and covered with thick, pure white wool. She saw Uncle Edward, with his yellow face and big nose and black whiskers, coming to her across the lawn at Chadwell Grange, carrying the lamb over his shoulder like Jesus.

It was a cold morning. They drove a long time in Uncle Edward's carriage, over the hard, loud roads, between fields white with frost, and Uncle Edward was not on his lawn.

Aunt Bella stood in the big hall, waiting for them. She looked much larger and more important than Mamma.

"Aunt Bella, have you got my new lamb?"

She tried not to shriek it out, because Aunt Bella was nearly always poorly, and Mamma told her that if you shrieked at her she would be ill.

Mamma said "Sh-sh-sh!" And Aunt Bella whispered something and she heard
Mamma answer, "Better not."

"If she sees it," said Aunt Bella, "she'll understand."

Mamma shook her head at Aunt Bella.

"Edward would like it," said Aunt Bella. "He wanted to give it her himself. It's his present."

Mamma took her hand and they followed Aunt Bella through the servants'
hall into the kitchen. The servants were all there, Rose and Annie and
Cook, and Mrs. Fisher, the housekeeper, and Giles, the young footman.
They all stared at her in a queer, kind way as she came in.

A low screen was drawn close round one corner of the fireplace; Uncle Edward and Pidgeon, the bailiff, were doing something to it with a yellow horse-cloth.

Uncle Edward came to her, looking down the side of his big nose. He led her to the screen and drew it away.

Something lay on the floor wrapped in a piece of dirty blanket. When
Uncle Edward pushed back the blanket a bad smell came out. He said,
"Here's your lamb, Mary. You're just in time."

She saw a brownish grey animal with a queer, hammer-shaped head and long black legs. Its body was drawn out and knotted like an enormous maggot. It lay twisted to one side and its eyes were shut.

"That isn't my lamb."

"It's the lamb I always said Miss Mary was to have, isn't it, Pidgeon?"

"Yes, Squoire, it's the lamb you bid me set asoide for little Missy."

"Then," said Mary, "why does it look like that?"

"It's very ill," Mamma said gently. "Poor Uncle Edward thought you'd like to see it before it died. You are glad you've seen it, aren't you?"

"No."

Just then the lamb stirred in its blanket; it opened its eyes and looked at her.

She thought: "It's my lamb. It looked at me. It's my lamb and it's dying. My lamb's dying."

The bad smell came again out of the blanket. She tried not to think of it. She wanted to sit down on the floor beside the lamb and lift it out of its blanket and nurse it; but Mamma wouldn't let her.

When she got home Mamma took down the toy lamb from the chest of drawers and brought it to her.

She sat quiet a long time holding it in her lap and stroking it.

The stiff eyes of the toy lamb stared away over its ears.

III

I.

Jenny was cross and tugged at your hair when she dressed you to go to
Chadwell Grange.

"Jenny-Wee, Mamma says if I'm not good Aunt Bella will be ill. Do you think it's really true?"

Jenny tugged. "I'd thank you for some of your Aunt Bella's illness," she said.

"I mean," Mary said, "like Papa was in the night. Every time I get 'cited and jump about I think she'll open her mouth and begin."

"Well, if she was to you'd oughter be sorry for her."

"I am sorry for her. But I'm frightened too."

"That's not being good," said Jenny. But she left off tugging.

Somehow you knew she was pleased to think you were not really good at Aunt Bella's, where Mrs. Fisher dressed and undressed you and you were allowed to talk to Pidgeon.

Roddy and Dank said you ought to hate Uncle Edward and Pidgeon and Mrs. Fisher, and not to like Aunt Bella very much, even if she was Mamma's sister. Mamma didn't really like Uncle Edward; she only pretended because of Aunt Bella.

Uncle Edward had an ugly nose and a yellow face widened by his black whiskers; his mouth stretched from one whisker to the other, and his black hair curled in large tufts above his ears. But he had no beard; you could see the whole of his mouth at once; and when Aunt Bella came into the room his little blue eyes looked up off the side of his nose and he smiled at her between his tufts of hair. It was dreadful to think that Mark and Dank and Roddy didn't like him. It might hurt him so much that he would never be happy again.

About Pidgeon she was not quite sure. Pidgeon was very ugly. He had long stiff legs, and a long stiff face finished off with a fringe of red whiskers that went on under his chin. Still, it was not nice to think of Pidgeon being unhappy either. But Mrs. Fisher was large and rather like Aunt Bella, only softer and more bulging. Her round face had a high red polish on it always, and when she saw you coming her eyes twinkled, and her red forehead and her big cheeks and her mouth smiled all together a fat, simmering smile. When you got to the black and white marble tiles you saw her waiting for you at the foot of the stairs.

She wanted to ask Mrs. Fisher if it was true that Aunt Bella would be ill if she were naughty; but a squeezing and dragging came under her waist whenever she thought about it, and that made her shy and ashamed. It went when they left her to play by herself on the lawn in front of the house.

Aunt Bella's house was enormous. Two long rows of windows stared out at you, their dark green storm shutters folded back on the yellow brick walls. A third row of little squeezed-up windows and little squeezed-up shutters blinked in the narrow space under the roof. All summer a sweet smell came from that side of the house where cream-coloured roses hung on the yellow walls between the green shutters. There was a cedar tree on the lawn and a sun-dial and a stone fountain. Goldfish swam in the clear greenish water. The flowers in the round beds were stiff and shining, as if they had been cut out of tin and freshly painted. When you thought of Aunt Bella's garden you saw calceolarias, brown velvet purses with yellow spots.

She could always get away from Aunt Bella by going down the dark walk between the yew hedge and the window of Mrs. Fisher's room, and through the stable-yard into the plantation. The cocks and hens had their black timber house there in the clearing, and Ponto, the Newfoundland, lived all by himself in his kennel under the little ragged fir trees.

When Ponto saw her coming he danced on his hind legs and strained at his chain and called to her with his loud, barking howl. He played with her, crawling on his stomach, crouching, raising first one big paw and then the other. She put out her foot, and he caught it and held it between his big paws, and looked at it with his head on one side, smiling. She squealed with delight, and Ponto barked again.

The stable bell would ring while they played in the plantation, and Uncle Edward or Pidgeon or Mrs. Fisher would come out and find her and take her back into the house. Ponto lifted up his head and howled after her as she went.

At lunch Mary sat quivering between Mamma and Aunt Bella. The squeezing and dragging under her waist had begun again. There was a pattern of green ivy round the dinner plates and a pattern of goats round the silver napkin rings. She tried to fix her mind on the ivy and the goats instead of looking at Aunt Bella to see whether she were going to be ill. She would be if you left mud in the hall on the black and white marble tiles. Or if you took Ponto off the chain and let him get into the house. Or if you spilled the gravy.

Aunt Bella's face was much pinker and richer and more important than
Mamma's face. She thought she wouldn't have minded quite so much if
Aunt Bella had been white and brown and pretty, like Mamma.

There—she had spilled the gravy.

Little knots came in Aunt Bella's pink forehead. Her face loosened and swelled with a red flush; her mouth pouted and drew itself in again, pulled out of shape by something that darted up the side of her nose and made her blink.

She thought: "I know—I know—I know it's going to happen."

It didn't. Aunt Bella only said, "You should look at your plate and spoon, dear."

After lunch, when they were resting, you could feel naughtiness coming on. Then Pidgeon carried you on his back to the calf-shed; or Mrs. Fisher took you up into her bedroom to see her dress.

In Mrs. Fisher's bedroom a smell of rotten apples oozed through the rosebud pattern on the walls. There were no doors inside, only places in the wall-paper that opened. Behind one of these places there was a cupboard where Mrs. Fisher kept her clothes. Sometimes she would take the lid off the big box covered with wall-paper and show you her Sunday bonnet. You sat on the bed, and she gave you peppermint balls to suck while she peeled off her black merino and squeezed herself into her black silk. You watched for the moment when the brooch with the black tomb and the weeping willow on it was undone and Mrs. Fisher's chin came out first by the open collar and Mrs. Fisher began to swell. When she stood up in her petticoat and bodice she was enormous; her breasts and hips and her great arms shook as she walked about the room.

Mary was sorry when she said good-bye to Uncle Edward and Aunt Bella and Mrs. Fisher.

For, always, as soon as she got home, Roddy rushed at her with the same questions.

"Did you let Uncle Edward kiss you?"

"Yes."

"Did you talk to Pidgeon?"

"Yes."

"Did you kiss Mrs. Fisher?"

"Yes."

And Dank said, "Have they taken Ponto off the chain yet?"

"No."

"Well, then, that shows you what pigs they are."

And when she saw Mark looking at her she felt small and silly and ashamed.

II.

It was the last week of the midsummer holidays. Mark and Dank had gone to stay for three days at Aunt Bella's, and on the second day they had been sent home.

Mamma and Roddy were in the garden when they came. They were killing snails in a flower-pot by putting salt on them. The snails turned over and over on each other and spat out a green foam that covered them like soapsuds as they died.

Mark's face was red and he was smiling. Even Dank looked proud of himself and happy. They called out together, "We've been sent home."

Mamma looked up from her flower-pot.

"What did you do?" she said.

"We took Ponto off the chain," said Dank.

"Did he get into the house?"

"Of course he did," said Mark. "Like a shot. He got into Aunt Bella's bedroom, and Aunt Bella was in bed."

"Oh, Mark!"

"Uncle Edward came up just as we were getting him out. He was in an awful wax."

"I'm afraid," Dank said, "I cheeked him."

"What did you say?"

"I told him he wasn't fit to have a dog. And he said we weren't to come again; and Mark said that was all we had come for—to let Ponto loose."

Mamma put another snail into the flower-pot, very gently. She was smiling and at the same time trying not to smile.

"He went back," said Mark, "and raked it up again about our chasing his sheep, ages ago."

"Did you chase the sheep?"

"No. Of course we didn't. They started to run because they saw Pidgeon coming, and Roddy ran after them till we told him not to. The mean beast said we'd made Mary's lamb die by frightening its mother. When he only gave it her because he knew it wouldn't live. Then he said we'd frightened Aunt Bella."

Mary stared at them, fascinated.

"Oh, Mark, was Aunt Bella ill?"

"Of course she wasn't. She only says she's going to be to keep you quiet."

"Well," said Mamma, "she won't be frightened any more. He'll not ask you again."

"We don't care. He's not a bit of good. He won't let us ride his horses or climb his trees or fish in his stinking pond."

"Let Mary go there," said Dank. "She likes it. She kisses Pidgeon."

"I don't," she cried. "I hate Pidgeon. I hate Uncle Edward and Aunt
Bella. I hate Mrs. Fisher."

Mamma looked up from her flower-pot, and, suddenly, she was angry.

"For shame! They're kind to you," she said. "You little naughty, ungrateful girl."

"They're not kind to Mark and Dank. That's why I hate them."

She wondered why Mamma was not angry with Mark and Dank, who had let
Ponto loose and frightened Aunt Bella.

IV

I.

That year when Christmas came Papa gave her a red book with a gold holly wreath on the cover. The wreath was made out of three words: The Children's Prize, printed in letters that pretended to be holly sprigs. Inside the holly wreath was the number of the year, in fat gold letters: 1869.

Soon after Christmas she had another birthday. She was six years old. She could write in capitals and count up to a hundred if she were left to do it by herself. Besides "Gentle Jesus," she could say "Cock-Robin" and "The House that Jack Built," and "The Lord is my Shepherd" and "The Slave in the Dismal Swamp." And she could read all her own story books, picking out the words she knew and making up the rest. Roddy never made up. He was a big boy, he was eight years old.

The morning after her birthday Roddy and she were sent into the drawing-room to Mamma. A strange lady was there. She had chosen the high-backed chair in the middle of the room with the Berlin wool-work parrot on it. She sat very upright, stiff and thin between the twisted rosewood pillars of the chair. She was dressed in a black gown made of a great many little bands of rough crape and a few smooth stretches of merino. Her crape veil, folded back over her hat, hung behind her head in a stiff square. A jet necklace lay flat and heavy on her small chest. When you had seen all these black things she showed you, suddenly, her white, wounded face.

Mamma called her Miss Thompson.

Miss Thompson's face was so light and thin that you thought it would break if you squeezed it. The skin was drawn tight over her jaw and the bridge of her nose and the sharp naked arches of her eye-bones. She looked at you with mournful, startled eyes that were too large for their lids; and her flat chin trembled slightly as she talked.

"This is Rodney," she said, as if she were repeating a lesson after
Mamma.

Rodney leaned up against Mamma and looked proud and handsome. She had her arm round him, and every now and then she pressed it tighter to draw him to herself.

Miss Thompson said after Mamma, "And this is Mary."

Her mournful eyes moved and sparkled as if she had suddenly thought of something for herself.

"I am sure," she said, "they will be very good."

Mamma shook her head, as much as to say Miss Thompson must not build on it.

Every weekday from ten to twelve Miss Thompson came and taught them reading, writing and arithmetic. Every Wednesday at half-past eleven the boys' tutor, Mr. Sippett, looked in and taught Rodney "Mensa: a table."

Mamma told them they must never be naughty with Miss Thompson because her mother was dead.

They went away and talked about her among the gooseberry bushes at the bottom of the garden.

"I don't know how we're going to manage," Rodney said. "There's no sense in saying we mustn't be naughty because her mother's dead."

"I suppose," Mary said, "it would make her think she's deader."

"We can't help that. We've got to be naughty some time."

"We mustn't begin," Mary said. "If we begin we shall have to finish."

They were good for four days, from ten to twelve. And at a quarter past twelve on the fifth day Mamma found Mary crying in the dining-room.

"Oh, Mary, have you been naughty?"

"No; but I shall be to-morrow. I've been so good that I can't keep on any longer."

Mamma took her in her lap. She lowered her head to you, holding it straight and still, ready to pounce if you said the wrong thing.

"Being good when it pleases you isn't being good," she said. "It's not what Jesus means by being good. God wants us to be good all the time, like Jesus."

"But—Jesus and me is different. He wasn't able to be naughty. And I'm not able to be good. Not all the time."

"You're not able to be good of your own will and in your own strength.
You're not good till God makes you good."

"Did God make me naughty?"

"No. God couldn't make anybody naughty."

"Not if he tried hard?"

"No. But," said Mamma, speaking very fast, "he'll make you good if you ask him."

"Will he make me good if I don't ask him?"

"No," said Mamma.

II.

Miss Thompson—

She was always sure you would be good. And Mamma was sure you wouldn't be, or that if you were it would be for some bad reason like being sorry for Miss Thompson.

As long as Roddy was in the room Mary was sorry for Miss Thompson. And when she was left alone with her she was frightened. The squeezing and dragging under her waist began when Miss Thompson pushed her gentle, mournful face close up to see what she was doing.

She was afraid of Miss Thompson because her mother was dead.

She kept on thinking about Miss Thompson's mother. Miss Thompson's mother would be like Jenny in bed with her cap off; and she would be like the dead field mouse that Roddy found in the lane. She would lie on the bed with her back bent and her head hanging loose like the dear little field mouse; and her legs would be turned up over her stomach like his, toes and fingers clawing together. When you touched her she would be cold and stiff, like the field mouse. They had wrapped her up in a white sheet. Roddy said dead people were always wrapped up in white sheets. And Mr. Chapman had put her into a coffin like the one he was making when he gave Dank the wood for the rabbit's house.

Every time Miss Thompson came near her she saw the white sheet and smelt the sharp, bitter smell of the coffin.

If she was naughty Miss Thompson (who seemed to have forgotten) would remember that her mother was dead. It might happen any minute.

It never did. For Miss Thompson said you were good if you knew your lessons; and at the same time you were not naughty if you didn't know them. You might not know them to-day; but you would know them to-morrow or the next day.

By midsummer Mary could read the books that Dank read. If it had not been for Mr. Sippett and "Mensa: a table," she would have known as much as Roddy.

Almost before they had time to be naughty Miss Thompson had gone. Mamma said that Roddy was not getting on fast enough.

V

I.

The book that Aunt Bella had brought her was called The Triumph Over
Midian, and Aunt Bella said that if she was a good girl it would
interest her. But it did not interest her. That was how she heard Aunt
Bella and Mamma talking together.

Mamma's foot was tapping on the footstool, which showed that she was annoyed.

"They're coming to-morrow," she said, "to look at that house at
Ilford."

"To live?" Aunt Bella said.

"To live," Mamma said.

"And is Emilius going to allow it? What's Victor thinking of, bringing her down here?"

"They want to be near Emilius. They think he'll look after her."

"It was Victor who would have her at home, and Victor might look after her himself. She was his favourite sister."

"He doesn't want to be too responsible. They think Emilius ought to take his share."

Aunt Bella whispered something. And Mamma said, "Stuff and nonsense! No more than you or I. Only you never know what queer thing she'll do next."

Aunt Bella said, "She was always queer as long as I remember her."

Mamma's foot went tap, tap again.

"She's been sending away things worse than ever. Dolls. Those naked ones."

Aunt Bella gave herself a shake and said something that sounded like
"Goo-oo-sh!" And then, "Going to be married?"

Mamma said, "Going to be married."

And Aunt Bella said "T-t-t."

They were talking about Aunt Charlotte.

Mamma went on: "She's packed off all her clothes. Her new ones. Sent them to Matilda. Thinks she won't have to wear them any more."

"You mustn't expect me to have Charlotte Olivier in my house," Aunt
Bella said. "If anybody came to call it would be most unpleasant."

"I wouldn't mind," Mamma said, tap-tapping, "if it was only Charlotte.
But there's Lavvy and her Opinions."

Aunt Bella said "Pfoo-oof!" and waved her hands as if she were clearing the air.

"All I can say is," Mamma said, "that if Lavvy Olivier brings her
Opinions into this house Emilius and I will walk out of it."

To-morrow—they were coming to-morrow, Uncle Victor and Aunt Lavvy and
Aunt Charlotte.

II.

They were coming to lunch, and everybody was excited.

Mark and Dank were in their trousers and Eton jackets, and Roddy in his new black velvet suit. The drawing-room was dressed out in its green summer chintzes that shone and crackled with glaze. Mamma had moved the big Chinese bowl from the cabinet to the round mahogany table and filled it with white roses. You could see them again in the polish; blurred white faces swimming on the dark, wine-coloured pool. You held out your face to be washed in the clear, cool scent of the white roses.

When Mark opened the door a smell of roast chicken came up the kitchen stairs.

It was like Sunday, except that you were excited.

"Look at Papa," Roddy whispered. "Papa's excited."

Papa had come home early from the office. He stood by the fireplace in the long tight frock-coat that made him look enormous. He had twirled back his moustache to show his rich red mouth. He had put something on his beard that smelt sweet. You noticed for the first time how the frizzed, red-brown mass sprang from a peak of silky golden hair under his pouting lower lip. He was letting himself gently up and down with the tips of his toes, and he was smiling, secretly, as if he had just thought of something that he couldn't tell Mamma. Whenever he looked at Mamma she put her hand up to her hair and patted it.

Mamma had done her hair a new way. The brown plait stood up farther back on the edge of the sloping chignon. She wore her new lavender and white striped muslin. Lavender ribbon streamed from the pointed opening of her bodice. A black velvet ribbon was tied tight round her neck; a jet cross hung from it and a diamond star twinkled in the middle of the cross. She pushed out her mouth and drew it in again, like Roddy's rabbit, and the tip of her nose trembled as if it knew all the time what Papa was thinking.

She was so soft and pretty that you could hardly bear it. Mark stood behind her chair and when Papa was not looking he kissed her. The behaviour of her mouth and nose gave you a delicious feeling that with Aunt Lavvy and Aunt Charlotte you wouldn't have to be so very good.

The front door bell rang. Papa and Mamma looked at each other, as much as to say, "Now it's going to begin." And suddenly Mamma looked small and frightened. She took Mark's hand.

"Emilius," she said, "what am I to say to Lavinia?"

"You don't say anything," Papa said. "Mary can talk to Lavinia."

Mary jumped up and down with excitement. She knew how it would be. In another minute Aunt Charlotte would come in, dressed in her black lace shawl and crinoline, and Aunt Lavvy would bring her Opinions. And something, something that you didn't know, would happen.

III.

Aunt Charlotte came in first with a tight, dancing run. You knew her by the long black curls on her shoulders. She was smiling as she smiled in the album. She bent her head as she bent it in the album, and her eyes looked up close under her black eyebrows and pointed at you. Pretty—pretty blue eyes, and something frightening that made you look at them. And something queer about her narrow jaw. It thrust itself forward, jerking up her smile.

No black lace shawl and no crinoline. Aunt Charlotte wore a blue and black striped satin dress, bunched up behind, and a little hat perched on the top of her chignon and tied underneath it with blue ribbons.

She had got in and was kissing everybody while Aunt Lavvy and Uncle
Victor were fumbling with the hat stand in the hall.

Aunt Lavvy came next. A long grey face. Black bands of hair parted on her broad forehead. Black eyebrows; blue eyes that stuck out wide, that didn't point at you. A grey bonnet, a grey dress, a little white shawl with a narrow fringe, drooping.

She walked slowly—slowly, as if she were still thinking of something that was not in the room, as if she came into a quiet, empty room.

You thought at first she was never going to kiss you, she was so tall and her face and eyes held themselves so still.

Uncle Victor. Dark and white; smaller than Papa, smaller than Aunt Lavvy; thin in his loose frock-coat. His forehead and black eyebrows were twisted above his blue, beautiful eyes. He had a small dark brown moustache and a small dark brown beard, trimmed close and shaped prettily to a point. He looked like something, like somebody; like Dank when he was mournful, like Dank's dog, Tibby, when he hid from Papa. He said, "Well, Caroline. Well, Emilius."

Aunt Charlotte gave out sharp cries of "Dear!" and "Darling!" and smothered them against your face in a sort of moan.

When she came to Roddy she put up her hands.

"Roddy—yellow hair. No. No. What have you done with the blue eyes and black hair, Emilius? That comes of letting your beard grow so long."

Then they all went into the dining-room.

It was like a birthday. There was to be real blancmange, and preserved ginger, and you drank raspberry vinegar out of the silver christening cups the aunts and uncles gave you when you were born. Uncle Victor had given Mary hers. She held it up and read her own name on it.

MARY VICTORIA OLIVIER
1863.

They were all telling their names. Mary took them up and chanted them:
"Mark Emilius Olivier; Daniel Olivier; Rodney Olivier; Victor Justus
Olivier; Lavinia Mary Olivier; Charlotte Louisa Olivier." She liked the
sound of them.

She sat between Uncle Victor and Aunt Lavvy. Roddy was squeezed into the corner between Mamma and Mark. Aunt Charlotte sat opposite her between Mark and Daniel. She had to look at Aunt Charlotte's face. There were faint grey smears on it as if somebody had scribbled all over it with pencil.

A remarkable conversation.

"Aunt Lavvy! Aunt Lavvy! Have you brought your Opinions?"

"No, my dear, they were not invited. So I left them at home."

"I'm glad to hear it," Papa said.

"Will you bring them next time?"

"No. Not next time, nor any other time," Aunt Lavvy said, looking straight at Papa.

"Did you shut them up in the stair cupboard?"

"No, but I may have to some day."

"Then," Mary said, "if there are any little ones, may I have one?"

"May she, Emilius?"

"Certainly not," Papa said. "She's got too many little opinions of her own."

"What do you know about opinions?" Uncle Victor said.

Mary was excited and happy. She had never been allowed to talk so much. She tried to eat her roast chicken in a business-like, grown-up manner, while she talked.

"I've read about them," she said. "They are dear little animals with long furry tails, much bigger than Sarah's tail, and they climb up trees."

"Oh, they climb up trees, do they?" Uncle Victor was very polite and attentive.

"Yes. There's their picture in Bank's Natural History Book. Next to the Ornythrincus or Duck-billed Plat-i-pus. If they came into the house Mamma would be frightened. But I would not be frightened. I should stroke them."

"Do you think," Uncle Victor said, still politely, "you quite know what you mean?"

"I know," Daniel said, "she means opossums."

"Yes," Mary said. "Opossums."

"What are opinions?"

"Opinions," Papa said, "are things that people put in other people's heads. Nasty, dangerous things, opinions."

She thought: "That was why Mamma and Papa were frightened."

"You won't put them into Mamma's head, will you, Aunt Lavvy?"

Mamma said, "Get on with your dinner. Papa's only teasing."

Aunt Lavvy's face flushed slowly, and she held her mouth tight, as if she were trying not to cry. Papa was teasing Aunt Lavvy.

"How do you like that Ilford house, Charlotte?" Mamma asked suddenly.

"It's the nicest little house you ever saw," Aunt Charlotte said. "But it's too far away. I'd rather have any ugly, poky old den that was next door. I want to see all I can of you and Emilius and Dan and little darling Mary. Before I go away."

"You aren't thinking of going away when you've only just come?"

"That's what Victor and Lavinia say. But you don't suppose I'm going to stay an old maid all my life to please Victor and Lavinia."

"I haven't thought about it at all," Mamma said.

"They have. I know what they're thinking. But it's all settled. I'm going to Marshall and Snelgrove's for my things. There's a silver-grey poplin in their window. If I decide on it, Caroline, you shall have my grey watered silk."

"You needn't waggle your big beard at me, Emilius," Aunt Charlotte said.

Papa pretended that he hadn't heard her and began to talk to Uncle
Victor.

"Did you read John Bright's speech in Parliament last night?"

Uncle Victor said, "I did."

"What did you think of it?"

Uncle Victor raised his shoulders and his eyebrows and spread out his thin, small hands.

"A man with a face like that," Aunt Charlotte said, "oughtn't to be in
Parliament."

"He's the man who saved England," said Papa.

"What's the good of that if he can't save himself? Where does he expect to go to with the hats he wears?"

"Where does Emilius expect to go to," Uncle Victor said, "when his John
Bright and his Gladstone get their way?"

Suddenly Aunt Charlotte left off smiling.

"Emilius," she said, "do you uphold Gladstone?"

"Of course I uphold Gladstone. There's nobody in this country fit to black his boots."

"I know nothing about his boots. But he's an infidel. He wants to pull down the Church. I thought you were a Churchman?"

"So I am," Papa said. "I've too good an opinion of the Church to imagine that it can't stand alone."

"You're a nice one to talk about opinions."

"At any rate I know what I'm talking about."

"I'm not so sure of that," said Aunt Charlotte.

Aunt Lavvy smiled gently at the pattern of the tablecloth.

"Do you agree with him, Lavvy?" Mamma had found something to say.

"I agree with him better than he agrees with himself."

A long conversation about things that interested Papa. Blanc-mange going round the table, quivering and shaking and squelching under the spoon.

"There's a silver-grey poplin," said Aunt Charlotte, "at Marshall and
Snelgrove's."

The blanc-mange was still going round. Mamma watched it as it went. She was fascinated by the shivering, white blanc-mange.

"If there was only one man in the world," Aunt Charlotte said in a loud voice, "and he had a flowing beard, I wouldn't marry him."

Papa drew himself up. He looked at Mark and Daniel and Roddy as if he were saying, "Whoever takes notice leaves the room."

Roddy laughed first. He was sent out of the room.

Papa looked at Mark. Mark clenched his teeth, holding his laugh down tight. He seemed to think that as long as it didn't come out of his mouth he was safe. It came out through his nose like a loud, tearing sneeze. Mark was sent out of the room.

Daniel threw down his spoon and fork.

"If he goes, I go," Daniel said, and followed him.

Papa looked at Mary.

"What are you grinning at, you young monkey?"

"Emilius," said Aunt Charlotte, "if you send another child out of the room, I go too."

Mary squealed, "Tee-he-he-he-he-hee! Te-hee!" and was sent out of the room.

She and Aunt Charlotte sat on the stairs outside the dining-room door. Aunt Charlotte's arm was round her; every now and then it gave her a sudden, loving squeeze.

"Darling Mary. Little darling Mary. Love Aunt Charlotte," she said.

Mark and Dank and Roddy watched them over the banisters.

Aunt Charlotte put her hand deep down in her pocket and brought out a little parcel wrapped in white paper. She whispered:

"If I give you something to keep, will you promise not to show it to anybody and not to tell?"

Mary promised.

Inside the paper wrapper there was a match-box, and inside the match-box there was a china doll no bigger than your finger. It had blue eyes and black hair and no clothes on. Aunt Charlotte held it in her hand and smiled at it.

"That's Aunt Charlotte's little baby," she said. "I'm going to be married and I shan't want it any more.

"There—take it, and cover it up, quick!"

Mamma had come out of the dining-room. She shut the door behind her.

"What have you given to Mary?" she said.

"Butter-Scotch," said Aunt Charlotte.

IV.

All afternoon till tea-time Papa and Uncle Victor walked up and down the garden path, talking to each other. Every now and then Mark and Mary looked at them from the nursery window.

That night she dreamed that she saw Aunt Charlotte standing at the foot of the kitchen stairs taking off her clothes and wrapping them in white paper; first, her black lace shawl; then her chemise. She stood up without anything on. Her body was polished and shining like an enormous white china doll. She lowered her head and pointed at you with her eyes.

When you opened the stair cupboard door to catch the opossum, you found a white china doll lying in it, no bigger than your finger. That was Aunt Charlotte.

In the dream there was no break between the end and the beginning. But when she remembered it afterwards it split into two pieces with a dark gap between. She knew she had only dreamed about the cupboard; but Aunt Charlotte at the foot of the stairs was so clear and solid that she thought she had really seen her.

Mamma had told Aunt Bella all about it when they talked together that day, in the drawing-room. She knew because she could still see them sitting, bent forward with their heads touching, Aunt Bella in the big arm-chair by the hearth-rug, and Mamma on the parrot chair.

END OF BOOK ONE

BOOK TWO CHILDHOOD (1869-1875)

VI

I.

When Christmas came Papa gave her another Children's Prize. This time the cover was blue and the number on it was 1870. Eighteen-seventy was the name of the New Year that was coming after Christmas. It meant that the world had gone on for one thousand eight hundred and seventy years since Jesus was born. Every year she was to have a Children's Prize with the name of the New Year on it.

Eighteen-seventy was a beautiful number. It sounded nice, and there was a seven in it. Seven was a sacred and holy number; so was three, because of the three Persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, and because of the seven stars and the seven golden candlesticks. When you said good-night to Mamma you kissed her either three times or seven times. If you went past three you had to go on to seven, because something dreadful would happen if you didn't. Sometimes Mamma stopped you; then you stooped down and finished up on the hem of her dress, quick, before she could see you.

She was glad that the Children's Prize had a blue cover, because blue was a sacred and holy colour. It was the colour of the ceiling in St. Mary's Chapel at Ilford, and it was the colour of the Virgin Mary's dress.

There were golden stars all over the ceiling of St. Mary's Chapel. Roddy and she were sent there after they had had chicken-pox and when their whooping-cough was getting better. They were not allowed to go to the church at Barkingside for fear of giving whooping-cough to the children in Dr. Barnardo's Homes; and they were not allowed to go to Aldborough Hatch Church because of Mr. Propart's pupils. But they had to go to church somewhere, whooping-cough or no whooping-cough, in order to get to Heaven; so Mark took them to the Chapel of Ease at Ilford, where the Virgin Mary in a blue dress stood on a sort of step over the door. Mamma said you were not to worship her, though you might look at her. She was a graven image. Only Roman Catholics worshipped graven images; they were heretics; that meant that they were shut outside the Church of England, which was God's Church, and couldn't get in. And they had only half a Sunday. In Roman Catholic countries Sunday was all over at twelve o'clock, and for the rest of the day the Roman Catholics could do just what they pleased; they danced and went to theatres and played games, as if Sunday was one of their own days and not God's day.

She wished she had been born in a Roman Catholic country.

Every night she took the Children's Prize to bed with her to keep her safe. It had Bible Puzzles in it, and among them there was a picture of the Name of God. A shining white light, shaped like Mamma's vinaigrette, with black marks in the middle. Mamma said the light was the light that shone above the Ark of the Covenant, and the black marks were letters and the word was the real name of God. She said he was sometimes called Jehovah, but that was not his real name. His real name was a secret name which nobody but the High Priest was allowed to say.

When you lay in the dark and shut your eyes tight and waited, you could see the light, shaped like the vinaigrette, in front of you. It quivered and shone brighter, and you saw in the middle, first, a dark blue colour, and then the black marks that were the real name of God. She was glad she couldn't read it, for she would have been certain to let it out some day when she wasn't thinking.

Perhaps Mamma knew, and was not allowed to say it. Supposing she forgot?

At church they sang "Praise Him in His name Jah and rejoice before Him." Jah was God's pet-name, short for Jehovah. It was a silly name—Jah. Somehow you couldn't help thinking of God as a silly person; he was always flying into tempers, and he was jealous. He was like Papa. Dank said Papa was jealous of Mark because Mamma was so fond of him. There was a picture of God in the night nursery. He had a big flowing beard, and a very straight nose, like Papa, and he was lying on a sort of sofa that was a cloud. Little Jesus stood underneath him, between the Virgin Mary and Joseph, and the Holy Ghost was descending on him in the form of a dove. His real name was Jesus Christ, but they called him Emmanuel.

"There is a fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Emmanuel's veins;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains."

That was another frightening thing. It would be like the fountain in Aunt Bella's garden, with blood in it instead of water. The goldfishes would die.

Mark was pleased when she said that Sarah wouldn't be allowed to go to
Heaven because she would try to catch the Holy Ghost.

Jesus was not like God. He was good and kind. When he grew up he was always dressed in pink and blue, and he had sad dark eyes and a little, close, tidy beard like Uncle Victor. You could love Jesus.

Jenny loved him. She was a Wesleyan; and her niece Catty was a Wesleyan. Catty marched round and round the kitchen table with the dish-cloth, drying the plates and singing:

"'I love Jesus, yes, I do, For the Bible tells me to!'"

and

"'I am so glad that my Father in Heaven
Tells of His love in the book He has given—
I am so glad that Jesus loves me,
Jesus loves me,
Jesus loves even me!'"

On New Year's Eve Jenny and Catty went to the Wesleyan Chapel at Ilford to sing the New Year in. Catty talked about the Old Year as if it was horrid and the New Year as if it was nice. She said that at twelve o'clock you ought to open the window wide and let the Old Year go out and the New Year come in. If you didn't something dreadful would happen.

Downstairs there was a party. Uncle Victor and Aunt Lavvy and Aunt
Charlotte were there, and the big boys from Vinings and the Vicarage at
Aldborough Hatch. Mark and Dank and Roddy were sitting up, and Roddy had
promised to wake her when the New Year was coming.

He left the door open so that she could hear the clock strike twelve. She got up and opened the windows ready. There were three in Mamma's room. She opened them all.

The air outside was like clear black water and very cold. You couldn't see the garden wall; the dark fields were close—close against the house. One—Two—Three.

Seven—When the last stroke sounded the New Year would have come in.

Ten—Eleven—Twelve.

The bells rang out; the bells of Ilford, the bells of Barkingside, and far beyond the flats and the cemetery there would be Bow bells, and beyond that the bells of the City of London. They clanged together and she trembled. The sounds closed over her; they left off and began again, not very loud, but tight—tight, crushing her heart, crushing tears out of her eyelids. When the bells stopped there was a faint whirring sound. That was the Old Year, that was eighteen sixty-nine, going out by itself in the dark, going away over the fields.

Mamma was not pleased when she came to bed and found the door and windows open and Mary awake in the cot.

II.

At the end of January she was seven years old. Something was bound to happen when you were seven.

She was moved out of Mamma's room to sleep by herself on the top floor in the night nursery. And the day nursery was turned into the boys' schoolroom.

When you were little and slept in the cot behind the curtain Mamma would sometimes come and read you to sleep with the bits you wanted: "The Lord is my Shepherd," and "Or ever the silver cord be loosed or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain or the wheel broken at the cistern," and "the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it; for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof."

When you were frightened she taught you to say, "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty…. He shall cover thee with His feathers and under His wings shalt thou trust…. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night." And you were allowed to have a night-light.

Now it was all different. You went to bed half an hour later, while Mamma was dressing for dinner, and when she came to tuck you up the bell rang and she had to run downstairs, quick, so as not to keep Papa waiting. You hung on to her neck and untucked yourself, and she always got away before you could kiss her seven times. And there was no night-light. You had to read the Bible in the morning, and it always had to be the bits Mamma wanted, out of Genesis and the Gospel of St. John.

You had to learn about the one God and the three Persons. The one God was the nice, clever, happy God who made Mamma and Mark and Jenny and the sun and Sarah and the kittens. He was the God you really believed in.

At night when you lay on your back in the dark you thought about being born and about arithmetic and God. The sacred number three went into eighteen sixty-nine and didn't come out again; so did seven. She liked numbers that fitted like that with no loose ends left over. Mr. Sippett said there were things you could do with the loose ends of numbers to make them fit. That was fractions. Supposing there was somewhere in the world a number that simply wouldn't fit? Mr. Sippett said there was no such number. But queer things happened. You were seven years old, yet you had had eight birthdays. There was the day you were born, January the twenty-fourth, eighteen sixty-three, at five o'clock in the morning. When you were born you weren't any age at all, not a minute old, not a second, not half a second. But there was eighteen sixty-two and there was January the twenty-third and the minute just before you were born. You couldn't really tell when the twenty-third ended and the twenty-fourth began; because when you counted sixty minutes for the hour and sixty seconds for the minute, there was still the half second and the half of that, and so on for ever and ever.

You couldn't tell when you were really born. And nobody could tell you what being born was. Perhaps nobody knew. Jenny said being born was just being born. Sarah's grandchildren were born in the garden under the wall where the jasmine grew. Roddy shouted at the back door, and when you ran to look he stretched out his arms across the doorway and wouldn't let you through. Roddy was excited and frightened; and Mamma said he had been very good because he stood across the door.

There was being born and there was dying. If you died this minute there would be the minute after. Then, if you were good, your soul was in Heaven and your body was cold and stiff like Miss Thompson's mother. And there was Lazarus. "He hath been in the grave four days and by this time he stinketh." That was dreadfully frightening; but they had to say it to show that Lazarus was really dead. That was how you could tell.

"'Lord, if thou hadst been here our brother had not died.'"

That was beautiful. When you thought of it you wanted to cry.

Supposing Mamma died? Supposing Mark died? Or Dank or Roddy? Or even
Uncle Victor? Even Papa?

They couldn't. Jesus wouldn't let them.

When you were frightened in the big dark room you thought about God and Jesus and the Holy Ghost. They didn't leave you alone a single minute. God and Jesus stood beside the bed, and Jesus kept God in a good temper, and the Holy Ghost flew about the room and perched on the top of the linen cupboard, and bowed and bowed, and said, "Rook-ke-heroo-oo! Rook-ke-keroo-oo!"

And there was the parroquet.

Mark had given her the stuffed parroquet on her birthday, and Mamma had given her the Bible and the two grey china vases to make up, with a bird painted on each. A black bird with a red beak and red legs. She had set them up on the chimney-piece under the picture of the Holy Family. She put the Bible in the middle and the parroquet on the top of the Bible and the vases one on each side.

She worshipped them, because of Mamma and Mark.

She said to herself: "God won't like that, but I can't help it. The kind, clever God won't mind a bit. He's much too busy making things. And it's not as if they were graven images."

III.

Jenny had taken her for a walk to Ilford and they were going home to the house in Ley Street.

There were only two walks that Jenny liked to go: down Ley Street to Barkingside where the little shops were; and up Ley Street to Ilford and Mr. Spall's, the cobbler's. She liked Ilford best because of Mr. Spall. She carried your boots to Mr. Spall just as they were getting comfortable; she was always ferreting in Sarah's cupboard for a pair to take to him. Mr. Spall was very tall and lean; he had thick black eyebrows rumpled up the wrong way and a long nose with a red knob at the end of it. A dirty grey beard hung under his chin, and his long, shaved lips curled over in a disagreeable way when he smiled at you.

When Jenny and Catty went to sing the New Year in at the Wesleyan Chapel he brought them home. Jenny liked him because his wife was dead, and because he was a Wesleyan and Deputy Grand Master of the Independent Order of Good Templars. You had to shake hands with him to say good-bye. He always said the same thing: "Next time you come, little Missy, I'll show you the Deputy Regalia." But he never did.

To-day Jenny had made her stand outside in the shop, among the old boots and the sheets of leather, while she and Mr. Spall went into the back parlour to talk about Jesus. The shop smelt of leather and feet and onions and of Mr. Spall, so that she was glad when they got out again. She wondered how Jenny could bear to sit in the back parlour with Mr. Spall.

Coming home at first she had to keep close by Jenny's side. Jenny was tired and went slowly; but by taking high prancing and dancing steps she could pretend that they were rushing along; and once they had turned the crook of Ley Street she ran on a little way in front of Jenny. Then, walking very fast and never looking back, she pretended that she had gone out by herself.

When she had passed the row of elms and the farm, and the small brown brick cottages fenced off with putty-coloured palings, she came to the low ditches and the flat fields on either side and saw on her left the bare, brown brick, pointed end of the tall house. It was called Five Elms.

Further down the road the green and gold sign of The Green Man and the scarlet and gold sign of the Horns Tavern hung high on white standards set up in the road. Further down still, where Ley Street swerved slightly towards Barkingside, three tall poplars stood in the slant of the swerve.

A queer white light everywhere, like water thin and clear. Wide fields, flat and still, like water, flooded with the thin, clear light; grey earth, shot delicately with green blades, shimmering. Ley Street, a grey road, whitening suddenly where it crossed open country, a hard causeway thrown over the flood. The high trees, the small, scattered cottages, the two taverns, the one tall house had the look of standing up in water.

She saw the queer white light for the first time and drew in her breath with a sharp check. She knew that the fields were beautiful.

She saw Five Elms for the first time: the long line of its old red-tiled roof, its flat brown face; the three rows of narrow windows, four at the bottom, with the front door at the end of the row, five at the top, five in the middle; their red brick eye-brows; their black glassy stare between the drawn-back curtains. She noticed how high and big the house looked on its slender plot of grass behind the brick wall that held up the low white-painted iron railing.

A tall iron gate between brown brick pillars, topped by stone balls. A flagged path to the front door. Crocuses, yellow, white, white and purple, growing in the border of the grass plot. She saw them for the first time.

The front door stood open. She went in.

The drawing-room at the back was full of the queer white light. Things stood out in it, sharp and suddenly strange, like the trees and houses in the light outside: the wine-red satin stripes in the grey damask curtains at the three windows; the rings of wine-red roses on the grey carpet; the tarnished pattern on the grey wall-paper; the furniture shining like dark wine; the fluted emerald green silk in the panel of the piano and the hanging bag of the work-table; the small wine-red flowers on the pale green chintz; the green Chinese bowls in the rosewood cabinet; the blue and red parrot on the chair.

Her mother sat at the far end of the room. She was sorting beads into trays in a box lined with sandal wood.

Mary stood at the doorway looking in, swinging her hat in her hand. Suddenly, without any reason, she was so happy that she could hardly bear it.

Mamma looked up. She said, "What are you doing standing there?"

She ran to her and hid her face in her lap. She caught Mamma's hands and kissed them. They smelt of sandal wood. They moved over her hair with slight quick strokes that didn't stay, that didn't care.

Mamma said, "There. That'll do. That'll do."

She climbed up on a chair and looked out of the window. She could see Mamma's small beautiful nose bending over the tray of beads, and her bright eyes that slid slantwise to look at her. And under the window she saw the brown twigs of the lilac bush tipped with green.

Her happiness was sharp and still like the white light.

Mamma said, "What did you see when you were out with Jenny to-day?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing? And what are you looking at?"

"Nothing, Mamma."

"Then go upstairs and take your things off. Quick!"

She went very slowly, holding herself with care, lest she should jar her happiness and spill it.

One of the windows of her room was open. She stood a little while looking out.

Beyond the rose-red wall of the garden she saw the flat furrowed field, stripes of grey earth and vivid green. In the middle of the field the five elms in a row, high and slender; four standing close together, one apart. Each held up a small rounded top, fine as a tuft of feathers.

On her left towards Ilford, a very long row of high elms screened off the bare flats from the village. Where it ended she saw Drake's Farm; black timbered barns and sallow haystacks beside a clump of trees. Behind the five elms, on the edge of the earth, a flying line of trees set wide apart, small, thin trees, flying away low down under the sky.

She looked and looked. Her happiness mixed itself up with the queer light and with the flat fields and the tall, bare trees.

She turned from the window and saw the vases that Mamma had given her standing on the chimney-piece. The black birds with red beaks and red legs looked at her. She threw herself on the bed and pressed her face into the pillow and cried "Mamma! Mamma!"

IV.

Passion Week. It gave you an awful feeling of something going to happen.

In the long narrow dining-room the sunlight through the three windows made a strange and solemn blue colour in the dark curtains. Mamma sat up at the mahogany table, looking sad and serious, with the Prayer Book open before her at the Litany. When you went in you knew that you would have to read about the Crucifixion. Nothing could save you.

Still you did find out things about God. In the Epistle it said: "'Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel and thy garments like him that treadeth the wine-fat? I have trodden the wine-press alone, and of the people there was none with me: for I will tread them in my anger, and trample them in my fury, and their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and I will stain all my raiment.'"

The Passion meant that God had flown into another temper and that Jesus was crucified to make him good again. Mark said you mustn't say that to Mamma; but he owned that it looked like it. Anyhow it was easier to think of it that way than to think that God sent Jesus down to be crucified because you were naughty.

There were no verses in the Prayer-Book Bible, only long grey slabs like tombstones. You kept on looking for the last tombstone. When you came to the one with the big black letters, THE KING OF THE JEWS, you knew that it would soon be over.

"'They clothed him with purple, and platted a crown of thorns and put it on his head….'" She read obediently: "'And when the sixth hour was come … and when the sixth hour was come there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice…. And Jesus cried with a loud voice … with a loud voice, and gave up the ghost.'"

Mamma was saying that the least you could do was to pay attention. But you couldn't pay attention every time. The first time it was beautiful and terrible; but after many times the beauty went and you were only frightened. When she tried to think about the crown of thorns she thought of the new hat Catty had bought for Easter Sunday and what Mr. Spall did when he ate the parsnips.

Through the barred windows of the basement she could hear Catty singing in the pantry:

"'I am so glad that Jesus loves me,
Jesus loves me,
Jesus loves me….'"

Catty was happy when she sang and danced round and round with the dish-cloth. And Jenny and Mr. Spall were happy when they talked about Jesus. But Mamma was not happy. She had had to read the Morning Prayer and the Psalms and the Lessons and the Litany to herself every morning; and by Thursday she was tired and cross.

Passion Week gave you an awful feeling.

Good Friday would be the worst. It was the real day that Jesus died. There would be the sixth hour and the ninth hour. Perhaps there would be a darkness.

But when Good Friday came you found a smoking hot-cross bun on everybody's plate at breakfast, tasting of spice and butter. And you went to Aldborough Hatch for Service. She thought: "If the darkness does come it won't be so bad to bear at Aldborough Hatch." She liked the new white-washed church with the clear windows, where you could stand on the hassock and look out at the green hill framed in the white arch. That was Chigwell.

"'There is a green hill far a-a-way
Without a city wall—'"

The green hill hadn't got any city wall. Epping Forest and Hainault Forest were there. You could think of them, or you could look at Mr. Propart's nice clean-shaved face while he read about the Crucifixion and preached about God's mercy and his justice. He did it all in a soothing, inattentive voice; and when he had finished he went quick into the vestry as if he were glad it was all over. And when you met him at the gate he didn't look as if Good Friday mattered very much.

In the afternoon she forgot all about the sixth hour and the ninth hour. Just as she was going to think about them Mark and Dank put her in the dirty clothes-basket and rolled her down the back stairs to make her happy. They shut themselves up in the pantry till she had stopped laughing, and when Catty opened the door the clock struck and Mark said that was the ninth hour.

It was all over. And nothing had happened. Nothing at all.

Only, when you thought of what had been done to Jesus, it didn't seem right, somehow, to have eaten the hot-cross buns.

V.

Grandmamma and Grandpapa Olivier were buried in the City of London
Cemetery. A long time ago, so long that even Mark couldn't remember it,
Uncle Victor had brought Grandmamma in a coffin all the way from
Liverpool to London in the train.

On Saturday afternoon Mamma had to put flowers on the grave for Easter Sunday, because of Uncle Victor and Aunt Lavvy. She took Roddy and Mary with her. They drove in Mr. Parish's wagonette, and called for Aunt Lavvy at Uncle Victor's tall white house at the bottom of Ilford High Street. Aunt Lavvy was on the steps, waiting for them, holding a big cross of white flowers. You could see Aunt Charlotte's face at the dining-room window looking out over the top of the brown wire blind. She had her hat on, as if she had expected to be taken too. Her eyes were sharp and angry, and Uncle Victor stood behind her with his hand on her shoulder.

Aunt Lavvy gave Mary the flower cross and climbed stiffly into the wagonette. Mary felt grown up and important holding the big cross on her knee. The white flowers gave out a thick, sweet smell.

As they drove away she kept on thinking about Aunt Charlotte, and about Uncle Victor bringing Grandmamma in a coffin in the train. It was very, very brave of him. She was sorry for Aunt Charlotte. Aunt Charlotte had wanted to go to the cemetery and they hadn't let her go. Perhaps she was still looking over the blind, sharp and angry because they wouldn't let her go.

Aunt Lavvy said, "We couldn't take Charlotte. It excited her too much last time." As if she knew what you were thinking.

The wagonette stopped by the railway-crossing at Manor Park, and they got out. Mamma told Mr. Parish to drive round to the Leytonstone side and wait for them there at the big gates. They wanted to walk through the cemetery and see what was to be seen.

Beyond the railway-crossing a muddy lane went along a field of coarse grass under a hedge of thorns and ended at a paling. Roddy whispered excitedly that they were in Wanstead Flats. The hedge shut off the cemetery from the flats; through thin places in the thorn bushes you could see tombstones, very white tombstones against very dark trees. There was a black wooden door in the hedge for you to go in by. The lane and the thorn bushes and the black door reminded Mary of something she had seen before somewhere. Something frightening.

When they got through the black door there were no tombstones. What showed through the hedge were the tops of high white pillars standing up among trees a long way off. They had come into a dreadful, bare, clay-coloured plain, furrowed into low mounds, as if a plough had gone criss-cross over it.

You saw nothing but mounds. Some of them were made of loose earth; some were patched over with rough sods that gaped in a horrible way. Perhaps if you looked through the cracks you would see down into the grave where the coffin was. The mounds had a fresh, raw look, as if all the people in the City of London had died and been buried hurriedly the night before. And there were no stones with names, only small, flat sticks at one end of each grave to show where the heads were.

Roddy said, "We've got to go all through this to get to the other side."

They could see Mamma and Aunt Lavvy a long way on in front picking their way gingerly among the furrows. If only Mark had been there instead of Roddy. Roddy would keep on saying: "The great plague of London. The great plague of London," to frighten himself. He pointed to a heap of earth and said it was the first plague pit.

In the middle of the ploughed-up plain she saw people in black walking slowly and crookedly behind a coffin that went staggering on black legs under a black pall. She tried not to look at them.

When she looked again they had stopped beside a heap that Roddy said was the second plague pit. Men in black crawled out from under the coffin as they put it down. She could see the bulk of it flattened out under the black pall. Against the raw, ochreish ground the figures of two mutes stood up, black and distinct in their high hats tied in the bunched out, streaming weepers. There was something filthy and frightful about the figures of the mutes. And when they dragged the pall from the coffin there was something filthy and frightful about the action.

"Roddy," she said, "I'm frightened."

Roddy said, "So am I. I say, supposing we went back? By ourselves. Across
Wanstead Flats." He was excited.

"We mustn't. That would frighten Mamma."

"Well, then, we'll have to go straight through."

They went, slowly, between the rows of mounds, along a narrow path of yellow clay that squeaked as their boots went in and out. Roddy held her hand. They took care not to tread on the graves. Every step brought them nearer to the funeral. They hadn't pointed it out to each other. They had pretended it wasn't there. Now it was no use pretending; they could see the coffin.

"Roddy—I can't—I can't go past the funeral."

"We've got to."

He looked at her with solemn eyes, wide open in his beautiful face. He was not really frightened, he was only trying to be because he liked it.

They went on. The tight feeling under her waist had gone; her body felt loose and light as if it didn't belong to her; her knees were soft and sank under her. Suddenly she let go Roddy's hand. She stared at the funeral, paralysed with fright.

At the end of the path Mamma and Aunt Lavvy stood and beckoned to them. Aunt Lavvy was coming towards them, carrying her white flower cross. They broke into a stumbling, nightmare run.

The bare clay plain stretched on past the place where Mamma and Aunt Lavvy had turned. The mounds here were big and high. They found Mamma and Aunt Lavvy standing by a very deep and narrow pit. A man was climbing up out of the pit on a ladder. You could see a pool of water shining far down at the bottom.

Mamma was smiling gently and kindly at the man and asking him why the grave was dug so deep. He said, "Why, because this 'ere lot and that there what you've come acrost is the pauper buryin' ground. We shovel 'em in five at a time this end."

Roddy said, "Like they did in the great plague of London."

"I don't know about no plague. But there's five coffins in each of these here graves, piled one atop of the other."

Mamma seemed inclined to say more to the grave-digger; but Aunt Lavvy frowned and shook her head at her, and they went on to where a path of coarse grass divided the pauper burying ground from the rest. They were now quite horribly near the funeral. And going down the grass path they saw another that came towards them; the palled coffin swaying on headless shoulders. They turned from it into a furrow between the huddled mounds. The white marble columns gleamed nearer among the black trees.

They crossed a smooth gravel walk into a crowded town of dead people. Tombstones as far as you could see; upright stones, flat slabs, rounded slabs, slabs like coffins, stone boxes with flat tops, broken columns; pointed pillars. Rows of tall black trees. Here and there a single tree sticking up stiffly among the tombstones. Very little trees that were queer and terrifying. People in black moving about the tombstones. A broad road and a grey chapel with pointed gables. Under a black tree a square plot enclosed by iron railings.

Grandmamma and Grandpapa Olivier were buried in one half of the plot under a white marble slab. In the other half, on the bare grass, a white marble curb marked out a place for another grave.

Roddy said, "Who's buried there?"

Mamma said, "Nobody. Yet. That's for—"

Mary saw Aunt Lavvy frown again and put her finger to her mouth.

She said, "Who? For who?" An appalling curiosity and fear possessed her. And when Aunt Lavvy took her hand she knew that the empty place was marked out for Mamma and Papa.

Outside the cemetery gates, in the white road, the black funeral horses tossed their heads and neighed, and the black plumes quivered on the hearses. In the wagonette she sat close beside Aunt Lavvy, with Aunt Lavvy's shawl over her eyes.

She wondered how she knew that you were frightened when Mamma didn't.
Mamma couldn't, because she was brave. She wasn't afraid of the funeral.

When Roddy said, "She oughtn't to have taken us, she ought to have known it would frighten us," Mark was angry with him. He said, "She thought you'd like it, you little beast. Because of the wagonette."

Darling Mamma. She had taken them because she thought they would like it.
Because of the wagonette. Because she was brave, like Mark.

VI.

Dead people really did rise. Supposing all the dead people in the City of London Cemetery rose and came out of their graves and went about the city? Supposing they walked out as far as Ilford? Crowds and crowds of them, in white sheets? Supposing they got into the garden?

"Please, God, keep me from thinking about the Resurrection. Please God, keep me from dreaming about coffins and funerals and ghosts and skeletons and corpses." She said it last, after the blessings, so that God couldn't forget. But it was no use.

If you said texts: "Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night."
"Yea, though I walk through the City of London Cemetery." It was no use.

"The trumpet shall sound and the dead shall arise … Incorruptible."

That was beautiful. Like a bright light shining. But you couldn't think about it long enough. And the dreams went on just the same: the dream of the ghost in the passage, the dream of the black coffin coming round the turn of the staircase and squeezing you against the banister; the dream of the corpse that came to your bed. She could see the round back and the curled arms under the white sheet.

The dreams woke her with a sort of burst. Her heart was jumping about and thumping; her face and hair were wet with water that came out of her skin.

The grey light in the passage was like the ghost-light of the dreams.

Gas light was a good light; but when you turned it on Jenny came up and put it out again. She said, "Goodness knows when you'll get to sleep with that light flaring."

There was never anybody about at bedtime. Jenny was dishing up the dinner. Harriet was waiting. Catty only ran up for a minute to undo the hooks and brush your hair.

When Mamma sent her to bed she came creeping back into the dining-room.
Everybody was eating dinner. She sickened with fright in the steam and
smell of dinner. She leaned her head against Mamma and whimpered, and
Mamma said in her soft voice, "Big girls don't cry because it's bed-time.
Only silly baby girls are afraid of ghosts."

Mamma wasn't afraid.

When she cried Mark left his dinner and carried her upstairs, past the place where the ghost was, and stayed with her till Catty came.

VII

I.

"Minx! Minx! Minx!"

Mark had come in from the garden with Mamma. He was calling to Mary. Minx was the name he had given her. Minx was a pretty name and she loved it because he had given it her. Whenever she heard him call she left what she was doing and ran to him.

Papa came out of the library with Boag's Dictionary open in his hand. "'Minx: A pert, wanton girl. A she-puppy.' Do you hear that, Caroline? He calls his sister a wanton she-puppy." But Mamma had gone back into the garden.

Mark stood at the foot of the stairs and Mary stood at the turn. She had one hand on the rail of the banister, the other pressed hard against the wall. She leaned forward on tiptoe, measuring her distance. When she looked at the stairs they fell from under her in a grey dizziness, so that Mark looked very far away.

They waited till Papa had gone back into the library—Mark held out his arms.

"Jump, Minky! Jump!"

She let go the rail and drew herself up. A delicious thrill of danger went through her and out at her fingers. She flung herself into space and Mark caught her. His body felt hard and strong as it received her. They did it again and again.

That was the "faith-jump." You knew that you would be killed if Mark didn't catch you, but you had faith that he would catch you; and he always did.

Mark and Dan were going to school at Chelmsted on the thirteenth of September, and it was the last week in August now. Mark and Mamma were always looking for each other. Mamma would come running up to the schoolroom and say, "Where's Mark? Tell Mark I want him"; and Mark would go into the garden and say, "Where's Mamma? I want her." And Mamma would put away her trowel and gardening gloves and go walks with him which she hated; and Mark would leave Napoleon Buonaparte and the plan of the Battle of Austerlitz to dig in the garden (and he loathed digging) with Mamma.

This afternoon he had called to Mary to come out brook-jumping. Mark could jump all the brooks in the fields between Ilford and Barkingside, and in the plantations beyond Drake's Farm; he could jump the Pool of Siloam where the water from the plantations runs into the lake below Vinings. Where there was no place for a little girl of seven to cross he carried her in his arms and jumped. He would stand outside in the lane and put his hands on the wall and turn heels over head into the garden.

She said to herself: "In six years and five months I shall be fourteen. I shall jump the Pool of Siloam and come into the garden head over heels." And Mamma called her a little humbug when she said she was afraid to go for a walk with Jenny lest a funeral should be coming along the road.

II.

The five elm trees held up their skirts above the high corn. The flat surface of the corn-tops was still. Hot glassy air quivered like a thin steam over the brimming field.

The glazed yellow walls of the old nursery gave out a strong light and heat. The air indoors was dry and smelt dusty like the hot, crackling air above the corn. The children had come in from their play in the fields; they leaned out of the windows and talked about what they were going to be.

Mary said, "I shall paint pictures and play the piano and ride in a circus. I shall go out to the countries where the sand is and tame zebras; and I shall marry Mark and have thirteen children with blue eyes like Meta."

Roddy was going to be the captain of a cruiser. Dan was going to Texas, or some place where Papa couldn't get at him, to farm. Mark was going to be a soldier like Marshal McMahon.

It was Grandpapa and Grandmamma's fault that he was not a soldier now.

"If," he said, "they'd let Papa marry Mamma when he wanted to, I might have been born in eighteen fifty-two. I'd be eighteen by this time. I should have gone into the French Army and I should have been with McMahon at Sedan now."

"You might have been killed," Mary said.

"That wouldn't have mattered a bit. I should have been at Sedan. Nothing matters, Minky, as long as you get what you want."

"If you were killed Mamma and me would die, too, the same minute. Papa would be sorry, then; but not enough to kill him, so that we should go to heaven together without him and be happy."

"Mamma wouldn't be happy without him. We couldn't shut him out."

"No," Mary said; "but we could pray to God not to let him come up too soon."

III.

Sedan—Sedan—Sedan.

Papa came out into the garden where Mamma was pulling weeds out of the hot dry soil. He flapped the newspaper and read about the Battle of Sedan. Mamma left off pulling weeds out and listened.

Mark had stuck the picture of Marshal McMahon over the schoolroom chimney-piece. Papa had pinned the war-map to the library door. Mark was restless. He kept on going into the library to look at the war-map and Papa kept on turning him out again. He was in a sort of mysterious disgrace because of Sedan. Roddy was excited about Sedan. Dan followed Mark as he went in and out; he was furious with Papa because of Mark.

Mamma had been a long time in the library talking to Papa. They sent for Mark just before dinner-time. When Mary ran in to say good-night she found him there.

Mark was saying, "You needn't think I want your beastly money. I shall enlist."

Mamma said, "If he enlists, Emilius, it'll kill me."

And Papa, "You hear what your mother says, sir. Isn't that enough for you?"

Mark loved Mamma; but he was not going to do what she wanted. He was going to do something that would kill her.

IV.

Papa walked in the garden in the cool of the evening, like the Lord God.
And he was always alone. When you thought of him you thought of Jehovah.

There was something funny about other people's fathers. Mr. Manisty, of Vinings, who rode along Ley Street with his two tall, thin sons, as if he were actually proud of them; Mr. Batty, the Vicar of Barkingside, who called his daughter Isabel his "pretty one"; Mr. Farmer, the curate of St. Mary's Chapel, who walked up and down the room all night with the baby; and Mr. Propart, who went about the public roads with Humphrey and Arthur positively hanging on him. Dan said Humphrey and Arthur were tame and domestic because they were always going about with Mr. Propart and talking to him as if they liked it. Mark had once seen Mr. Propart trying to jump a ditch on the Aldborough Road. It was ridiculous. Humphrey and Arthur had to grab him by the arms and pull him over. Mary was sorry for the Propart boys because they hadn't got a mother who was sweet and pretty like Mamma and a father called Emilius Olivier. Emilius couldn't jump ditches any more than Mr. Propart; but then he knew he couldn't, and as Mark said, he had the jolly good sense not to try. You couldn't be Jehovah and jump ditches.

Emilius Olivier was everything a father ought to be.

Then suddenly, for no reason at all, he left off being Jehovah and began trying to behave like Mr. Batty.

It was at dinner, the last Sunday before the thirteenth. Mamma had moved Roddy and Mary from their places so that Mark and Dan could sit beside her. Mary was sitting at the right hand of Papa in the glory of the Father. The pudding had come in; blanc-mange, and Mark's pudding with whipped cream hiding the raspberry jam. It was Roddy's turn to be helped; his eyes were fixed on the snow-white, pure blanc-mange shuddering in the glass dish, and Mamma had just asked him which he would have when Papa sent Mark and Dan out of the room. You couldn't think why he had done it this time unless it was because Mark laughed when Roddy said in his proud, dignified voice, "I'll have a little piece of the Virgin's womb, please, first." Or it may have been because of Mark's pudding. He never liked it when they had Mark's pudding. Anyhow, Mark and Dan had to go, and as they went he drew Mary's chair closer to him and heaped her plate with cream and jam, looking very straight at Mamma as he did it.

"You might have left them alone," Mamma said, "on their last Sunday. They won't be here to annoy you so very long."

Papa said, "There are three days yet till the thirteenth."

"Three days! You'll count the hours and the minutes till you've got what you want."

"What I want is peace and quiet in my house and to get a word in edgeways, sometimes, with my own wife."

"You've no business to have a wife if you can't put up with your own children."

"It isn't my business to have a wife," Papa said. "It's my pleasure. My business is to insure ships. And you see me putting up with Mary very well. I suppose she's my own child."

"Mark and Dan are your own children first."

"Are they? To judge by your infatuation I should have said they weren't. 'Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow? Silver bells and cockle shells, and chocolate creams all in a row.'"

He took a large, flat box of chocolates out of his pocket and laid it beside her plate. And he looked straight at Mamma again.

"If those are the chocolates I reminded you to get for—for the hamper, I won't have them opened."

"They are not the chocolates you reminded me to get for—the hamper. I suppose Mark's stomach is a hamper. They are the chocolates I reminded myself to get for Mary."

Then Mamma said a peculiar thing.

"Are you trying to show me that you're not jealous of Mary?"

"I'm not trying to show you anything. You know I'm not jealous of Mary.
And you know there's no reason why I should be."

"To hear you, Emilius, anybody would think I wasn't fond of my own daughter. Mary darling, you'd better run away."

"And Mary darling," he mocked her, "you'd better take your chocolates with you."

Mary said: "I don't want any chocolates, Papa."

"Is that her contrariness, or just her Mariness?"

"Whatever it is it's all the thanks you get, and serve you right, too," said Mamma.

She went upstairs to persuade Dan that Papa didn't mean it. It was just his way, and they'd see he would be different to-morrow.

But to-morrow and the next day and the next he was the same. He didn't actually send Mark and Dan out of the room again, but he tried to pretend to himself that they weren't there by refusing to speak to them.

"Do you think," Mark said, "he'll keep it up till the last minute?"

He did; even when he heard the sound of Mr. Parish's wagonette in the road, coming to take Mark and Dan away. They were sitting at breakfast, trying not to look at him for fear they should laugh, or at Mamma for fear they should cry, trying not to look at each other. Catty brought in the cakes, the hot buttered Yorkshire cakes that were never served for breakfast except on Christmas Day and birthdays. Mary wondered whether Papa would say or do anything. He couldn't. Everybody knew those cakes were sacred. Catty set them on the table with a sort of crash and ran out of the room, crying. Mamma's mouth quivered.

Papa looked at the cakes; he looked at Mamma; he looked at Mark. Mark was staring at nothing with a firm grin on his face.

"The assuagers of grief," Papa said. "Pass round the assuagers."

The holy cakes were passed round. Everybody took a piece except Dan.

Papa pressed him. "Try an assuager. Do."

And Mamma pleaded, "Yes, Dank."

"Do you hear what your mother says?"

Dan's eyes were red-rimmed. He took a double section of cake and tried to bite his way through.

At the first taste tears came out of his eyes and fell on his cake. And when Mamma saw that she burst out crying.

Mary put her piece down untasted and bit back her sobs. Roddy pushed his piece away; and Mark began to eat his, suddenly, bowing over it with an affectation of enjoyment.

Outside in the road Mr. Parish was descending from the box of his wagonette. Papa looked at his watch. He was going with them to Chelmsted.

And Mamma whispered to Mark and Dan with her last kiss, "He'll be all right in the train."

It was all over. Mary and Roddy sat in the dining-room where Mamma had left them. They had shut their eyes so as not to see the empty chairs pushed back and the pieces of the sacred cakes, bitten and abandoned. They had stopped their ears so as not to hear the wheels of Mr. Parish's wagonette taking Mark and Dan away.

Hours afterwards Mamma came upon Mary huddled up in a corner of the drawing-room.

"Mamma—Mamma—I can't bear it. I can't live without Mark. And Dan."

Mamma sat down and took her in her arms and rocked her, rocked her without a word, soothing her own grief.

Papa found them like that when he came back from Chelmsted. He stood in the doorway looking at them for a moment, then slunk out of the room as if he were ashamed of himself. When Mamma sent Mary out to say good-bye to him, he was standing beside the little sumach tree that Mark gave Mamma on her birthday. He was smiling at the sumach tree as if he loved it and was sorry for it.

And Mamma got a letter from Mark in the morning to say she was right.
Papa had been quite decent in the train.

V.

After Mark and Dan had gone a great and very remarkable change came over Papa and Mamma. Mamma left off saying the funny things that Mary could not understand, and Papa left off teasing and flying into tempers and looking like Jehovah and walking by himself in the cool of the evening. He followed Mamma about the garden. He hung over her chair, like Mark, as she sat sewing. You came upon him suddenly on the stairs and in the passages, and he would look at you as if you were not there, and say, "Where's your mother? Go and tell her I want her." And Mamma would put away her trowel and her big leather gloves and go to him. She would sit for hours in the library while he flapped the newspaper and read to her in a loud voice about Mr. Gladstone whom she hated.

Sometimes he would come home early from the office, and Mamma and Mary would be ready for him, and they would all go together to call at Vinings or Barkingside Vicarage or on the Proparts.

Or Mr. Parish's wagonette would be ordered, and Mamma and Mary would put on their best clothes very quick and go up to London with him, and he would take them to St. Paul's or Maskelyne and Cooke's, or the National Gallery or the British Museum. Or they would walk slowly, very slowly, up Regent Street, stopping at the windows of the bonnet shops while Mamma picked out the bonnet she would buy if she could afford it. And perhaps the next day a bonnet would come in a bandbox, a bonnet that frightened her when she put it on and looked at herself in the glass. She would pretend it was one of the bonnets she had wanted; and when Papa had forgotten about it she would pull all the trimming off and put it all on again a different way, and Papa would say it was an even more beautiful bonnet than he had thought.

You might have supposed that he was sorry because he was thinking about Mark and Dan and trying to make up for having been unkind to them. But he was not sorry. He was glad. Glad about something that Mamma had done. He would go about whistling some gay tune, or you caught him stroking his moustache and parting it over his rich lips that smiled as if he were thinking of what Mamma had done to make him happy. The red specks and smears had gone from his eyes, they were clear and blue, and they looked at you with a kind, gentle look, like Uncle Victor's. His very beard was happy.

"You may not know it, but your father is the handsomest man in Essex,"
Mamma said.

Perhaps it wasn't anything that Mamma had done. Perhaps he was only happy because he was being good. Every Sunday he went to church at Barkingside with Mamma, kneeling close to her in the big pew and praying in a great, ghostly voice, "Good Lord, deliver us!" When the psalms and hymns began he rose over the pew-ledge, yards and yards of him, as if he stood on many hassocks, and he lifted up his beard and sang. All these times the air fairly tingled with him; he seemed to beat out of himself and spread around him the throb of violent and overpowering life. And in the evenings towards sunset they walked together in the fields, and Mary followed them, lagging behind in the borders where the sharlock and wild rye and poppies grew. When she caught up with them she heard them talking.

Once Mamma said, "Why can't you always be like this, Emilius?"

And Papa said, "Why, indeed!"

And when Christmas came and Mark and Dan were back again he was as cruel and teasing as he had ever been.

VI.

Eighteen seventy-one.

One cold day Roddy walked into the Pool of Siloam to recover his sailing boat which had drifted under the long arch of the bridge.

There was no Passion Week and no Good Friday and no Easter that spring, only Roddy's rheumatic fever. Roddy in bed, lying on his back, his face white and sharp, his hair darkened and glued with the sweat that poured from his hair and soaked into the bed. Roddy crying out with pain when they moved him. Mamma and Jenny always in Roddy's room, Mr. Spall's sister in the kitchen. Mary going up and down, tiptoe, on messages, trying not to touch Roddy's bed.

Dr. Draper calling, talking in a low voice to Mamma, and Mamma crying. Dr. Draper looking at you through his spectacles and putting a thing like a trumpet to your chest and listening through it.

"You're quite right, Mrs. Olivier. There's nothing wrong with the little girl's heart. She's as sound as a bell."

A dreadful feeling that you had no business to be as sound as a bell. It wasn't fair to Roddy.

Something she didn't notice at the time and remembered afterwards when Roddy was well again. Jenny saying to Mamma, "If it had to be one of them it had ought to have been Miss Mary."

And Mamma saying to Jenny, "It wouldn't have mattered so much if it had been the girl."

VII.

You knew that Catty loved you. There was never the smallest uncertainty about it. Her big black eyes shone when she saw you coming. You kissed her smooth cool cheeks, and she hugged you tight and kissed you back again at once; her big lips made a noise like a pop-gun. When she tucked you up at night she said, "I love you so much I could eat you."

And she would play any game you liked. You had only to say, "Let's play the going-away game," and she was off. You began: "I went away to the big hot river where the rhinoceroses and hippopotamuses are"; or: "I went away to the desert where the sand is, to catch zebras. I rode on a dromedary, flump-flumping through the sand," and Catty would follow it up with: "I went away with the Good Templars. We went in a row-boat on a lake, and we landed on an island where there was daffodillies growing. We had milk and cake; and it blew such a cool breeze."

Catty was full of love. She loved her father and mother and her little sister Amelia better than anything in the whole world. Her home was in Wales. Tears came into her eyes when she thought about her home and her little sister Amelia.

"Catty—how much do you love me?"

"Armfuls and armfuls."

"As much as your mother?"

"Very near as much."

"As much as Amelia?"

"Every bit as much."

"How much do you think Jenny loves me?"

"Ever so much."

"No. Jenny loves Roddy best; then Mark; then Dank; then Mamma; then Papa; then me. That isn't ever so much."

Catty was vexed. "You didn't oughter go measuring people's love, Miss
Mary."

Still, that was what you did do. With Catty and Jenny you could measure till you knew exactly where you were.

Mamma was different.

You knew when she loved you. You could almost count the times: the time when Papa frightened you; the time when you cut your forehead; the time the lamb died; all the whooping-cough and chicken-pox times, and when Meta, the wax doll, fell off the schoolroom table and broke her head; and when Mark went away to school. Or when you were good and said every word of your lessons right; when you watched Mamma working in the garden, planting and transplanting the flowers with her clever hands; and when you were quiet and sat beside her on the footstool, learning to knit and sew. On Sunday afternoons when she played the hymns and you sang:

"There's a Friend for little children
Above the bright blue sky,"

quite horribly out of tune, and when you listened while she sang herself, "Lead, kindly light," or "Abide with me," and her voice was so sweet and gentle that it made you cry. Then you knew.

Sometimes, when it was not Sunday, she played the Hungarian March, that went, with loud, noble noises:

Droom—Droom—Droom-era-room
Droom—Droom—Droom-era-room
Droom rer-room-room droom-room-room
Droom—Droom—Droom.

It was wonderful. Mamma was wonderful. She swayed and bowed to the beat of the music, as if she shook it out of her body and not out of the piano. She smiled to herself when she saw that you were listening. You said "Oh—Mamma! Play it again," and she played it again. When she had finished she stooped suddenly and kissed you. And you knew.

But she wouldn't say it. You couldn't make her.

"Say it, Mamma. Say it like you used to."

Mamma shook her head.

"I want to hear you say it."

"Well, I'm not going to."

"I love you. I ache with loving you. I love you so much that it hurts me to say it."

"Why do you do it, then?"

"Because it hurts me more not to. Just once. 'I love you.' Just a weeny once."

"You're going to be like your father, tease, tease, tease, all day long, till I'm worn out."

"I'm not going to be like Papa. I don't tease. It's you that's teasing.
How'm I to know you love me if you won't say it?"

Mamma said, "Can't you see what I'm doing?"

"No."

She was not interested in the thin white stuff and the lace—Mamma's needle-work.

"Well, then, look in the basket."

The basket was full of tiny garments made of the white stuff, petticoats, drawers and nightgown, sewn with minute tucks and edged with lace. Mamma unfolded them.

"New clothes," she said, "for your new dolly."

"Oh—oh—oh—I love you so much that I can't bear it; you little holy
Mamma!"

Mamma said, "I'm not holy, and I won't be called holy. I want deeds, not words. If you love me you'll learn your lessons properly the night before, not just gabble them over hot from the pan."

"I will, Mamma, I will. Won't you say it?"

"No," Mamma said, "I won't."

She sat there with a sort of triumph on her beautiful face, as if she were pleased with herself because she hadn't said it. And Mary would bring the long sheet that dragged on her wrist, and the needle that pricked her fingers, and sit at Mamma's knee and sew, making a thin trail of blood all along the hem.

"Why do you look at me so kindly when I'm sewing?"

"Because I like to see you behaving like a little girl, instead of tearing about and trying to do what boys do."

And Mamma would tell her a story, always the same story, going on and on, about the family of ten children who lived in the farm by the forest. There were seven boys and three girls. The six youngest boys worked on the farm with their father—yes, he was a very nice father—and the eldest boy worked in the garden with his mother, and the three girls worked in the house. They could cook and make butter and cheese, and bake bread; and even the youngest little girl could knit and sew.

"Had they any children?"

"No, they were too busy to think about having children. They were all very, very happy together, just as they were."

The story was like the hem, there was never any end to it, for Mamma was always finding something else for the three girls to do. She smiled as she told it, as if she saw something that pleased her.

Mary felt that she could go on sewing at the hem and pricking her finger for ever if Mamma would only keep that look on her face.

VIII

I.

"I can't, Jenny, I can't. I know there's a funeral coming."

Mary stood on the flagstone inside the arch of the open gate. She looked up and down the road and drew back again into the garden. Jenny, tired and patient, waited outside.

"I've told you, Miss Mary, there isn't any funeral."

"If there isn't there will be. There! I can see it."

"You see Mr. Parish's high 'at a driving in his wagonette."

It was Mr. Parish's high hat. When he put the black top on his wagonette it looked like a hearse.

They started up Ley Street towards Mr. Spall's cottage.

Jenny said, "I thought you was going to be such a good girl when Master
Roddy went to school. But I declare if you're not twice as tiresome."

Roddy had gone to Chelmsted after midsummer. She had to go for walks on the roads with Jenny now at the risk of meeting funerals.

This week they had been every day to Ilford to call at Mr. Spall's cottage or at Benny's, the draper's shop in the High Street.

Jenny didn't believe that a big girl, nine next birthday, could really be afraid of funerals. She thought you were only trying to be tiresome. She said you could stop thinking about funerals well enough when you wanted. You did forget sometimes when nice things happened; when you went to see Mrs. Farmer's baby undressed, and when Isabel Batty came to tea. Isabel was almost a baby. It felt nice to lift her and curl up her stiff, barley-sugar hair and sponge her weak, pink silk hands. And there were things that you could do. You could pretend that you were not Mary Olivier but somebody else, that you were grown-up and that the baby and Isabel belonged to you and were there when they were not there. But all the time you knew there would be a funeral on the road somewhere, and that some day you would see it.

When they got into the High Street the funeral was coming along the Barking Road. She saw, before Jenny could see anything at all, the mutes, sitting high, and their black, bunched-up weepers. She turned and ran out of the High Street and back over the railway bridge. Jenny called after her, "Come back!" and a man on the bridge shouted "Hi, Missy! Stop!" as she ran down Ley Street. Her legs shook and gave way under her. Once she fell. She ran, staggering, but she ran. People came out of their cottages to look at her. She thought they had come out to look at the funeral.

After that she refused to go outside the front door or to look through the front windows for fear she should see a funeral.

They couldn't take her and carry her out; so they let her go for walks in the back garden. When Papa came home she was sent up to the schoolroom to play with the doll's house. You could see the road through the high bars of the window at the end of the passage, so that even when Catty lit the gas the top floor was queer and horrible.

Sometimes doubts came with her terror. She thought: "Nobody loves me except Mark. And Mark isn't here." Mark's image haunted her. She shut her eyes and it slid forward on to the darkness, the strong body, the brave, straight up and down face, the steady, light brown eyes, shining; the firm, sweet mouth; the sparrow-brown hair with feathery golden tips. She could hear Mark's voice calling to her: "Minx! Minky!"

And there was something that Mamma said. It was unkind to be afraid of the poor dead people. Mamma said, "Would you run away from Isabel if you saw her lying in her little coffin?"

II.

Jenny's new dress had come.

It was made of grey silk trimmed with black lace, and it lay spread out on the bed in the spare room. Mamma and Aunt Bella stood and looked at it, and shook their heads as if they thought that Jenny had no business to wear a silk dress.

Aunt Bella said, "She's a silly woman to go and leave a good home. At her age."

And Mamma said, "I'd rather see her in her coffin. It would be less undignified. She meant to do it at Easter; she was only waiting till Roddy went to school. She's waiting now till after the Christmas holidays."

Jenny was going to do something dreadful.

She was going to be married. The grey silk dress was her wedding-dress. She was going to marry Mr. Spall. Even Catty thought it was rather dreadful.

But Jenny was happy because she was going to wear the grey silk dress and live in Mr. Spall's cottage and talk to him about Jesus. Only one half of her face drooped sleepily; the other half had waked up, and looked excited; there was a flush on it as bright as paint.

III.

Mary's bed stood in a corner of the night nursery, and beside it was the high yellow linen cupboard. When the doors were opened there was a faint india-rubbery smell from the mackintosh sheet that had been put away on the top shelf.

One night she was wakened by Catty coming into the room and opening the cupboard doors. Catty climbed on a chair and took something from the top shelf. She didn't answer when Mary asked what she was doing, but hurried away, leaving the door on the latch. Her feet made quick thuds along the passage. A door opened and shut, and there was a sound of Papa going downstairs. Somebody came up softly and pulled the door to, and Mary went to sleep again.

When she woke the room was full of the grey light that frightened her. But she was not frightened. She woke sitting up on her pillow, staring into the grey light, and saying to herself, "Jenny is dead."

But she was not afraid of Jenny. The stillness in her heart spread into the grey light of the room. She lay back waiting for seven o'clock when Catty would come and call her.

At seven o'clock Mamma came. She wore the dress she had worn last night, and she was crying.

Mary said, "You haven't got to say it. I know Jenny is dead."

The blinds were drawn in all the windows when she and Mark went into the front garden to look for snowdrops in the border by the kitchen area. She knew that Jenny's dead body lay on the sofa under the kitchen window behind the blind and the white painted iron bars. She hoped that she would not have to see it; but she was not afraid of Jenny's dead body. It was sacred and holy.

She wondered why Mamma sent her to Uncle Edward and Aunt Bella. From the top-storey windows of Chadwell Grange you could look beyond Aldborough Hatch towards Wanstead Flats and the City of London Cemetery. They were going to bury Jenny there. She stood looking out, quiet, not crying. She only cried at night when she thought of Jenny, sitting in the low nursery chair, tired and patient, drawing back from her violent caresses, and of the grey silk dress laid out on the bed in the spare room.

She was not even afraid of the City of London Cemetery when Mark took her to see Jenny's grave. Jenny's grave was sacred and holy.

IX

I.

You had to endure hardness after you were nine. You learnt out of Mrs. Markham's "History of England," and you were not allowed to read the conversations between Richard and Mary and Mrs. Markham because they made history too amusing and too easy to remember. For the same reason you translated only the tight, dismal pages of your French Reader, and anything that looked like an interesting story was forbidden. You were to learn for the sake of the lesson and not for pleasure's sake. Mamma said you had enough pleasure in play-time. She put it to your honour not to skip on to the more exciting parts.

When you had finished Mrs. Markham you began Dr. Smith's "History of England." Honour was safe with Dr. Smith. He made history very hard to read and impossible to remember.

The Bible got harder, too. You knew all the best Psalms by heart, and the stories about Noah's ark and Joseph and his coat of many colours, and David, and Daniel in the lions' den. You had to go straight through the Bible now, skipping Leviticus because it was full of things you couldn't understand. When you had done with Moses lifting up the serpent in the wilderness you had to read about Aaron and the sons of Levi, and the wave-offerings, and the tabernacle, and the ark of the covenant where they kept the five golden emerods. Mamma didn't know what emerods were, but Mark said they were a kind of white mice.

You learnt Old Testament history, too, out of a little book that was all grey slabs of print and dark pictures showing the earth swallowing up Korah, Dathan and Abiram, and Aaron and the sons of Levi with their long beards and high hats and their petticoats, swinging incense in fits of temper. You found out queerer and queerer things about God. God made the earth swallow up Korah, Dathan and Abiram. He killed poor Uzzah because he put out his hand to prevent the ark of the covenant falling out of the cart. Even David said he didn't know how on earth he was to get the ark along at that rate. And there were the Moabites and the Midianites and all the animals: the bullocks and the he-goats and the little lambs and kids. When you asked Mamma why God killed people, she said it was because he was just as well as merciful, and (it was the old story) he hated sin. Disobedience was sin, and Uzzah had been disobedient.

As for the lambs and the he-goats, Jesus had done away with all that. He was God's son, and he had propitiated God's anger and satisfied his justice when he shed his own blood on the cross to save sinners. Without shedding of blood there is no remission of sins. You were not to bother about the blood.

But you couldn't help bothering about it. You couldn't help being sorry for Uzzah and the Midianites and the lambs and the he-goats.

Perhaps you had to sort things out and keep them separate. Here was the world, here were Mamma and Mark and kittens and rabbits, and all the things you really cared about: drawing pictures, and playing the Hungarian March and getting excited in the Easter holidays when the white evenings came and Mark raced you from the Green Man to the Horns Tavern. Here was the sudden, secret happiness you felt when you were by yourself and the fields looked beautiful. It was always coming now, with a sort of rush and flash, when you least expected it.

And there was God and religion and duty. The nicest part of religion was music, and knowing how the world was made, and the beautiful sounding bits of the Bible. You could like religion. But duty was doing all the things you didn't like because you didn't like them. And you couldn't honestly say you liked God. God had to be propitiated; your righteousness was filthy rags; so you couldn't propitiate him. Jesus had to do it for you. All you had to do was to believe, really believe that he had done it.

But supposing you hadn't got to believe it, supposing you hadn't got to believe anything at all, it would be easier to think about. The things you cared for belonged to each other, but God didn't belong to them. He didn't fit in anywhere. You couldn't help feeling that if God was love, and if he was everywhere, he ought to have fitted in. Perhaps, after all, there were two Gods; one who made things and loved them, and one who didn't; who looked on sulking and finding fault with what the clever kind God had made.

When the midsummer holidays came and brook-jumping began she left off thinking about God.

II.

"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown"—

The picture in the Sunday At Home showed the old King in bed and Prince Hal trying on his crown. But the words were not the Sunday At Home; they were taken out of Shakespeare. Mark showed her the place.

Mark was in the schoolroom chanting his home-lessons:

"'Yet once more, oh ye laurels, and once more,
Ye myrtles brown with ivy never sere'"—

That sounded nice. "Say it again, Mark, say it again." Mark said it again. He also said:

"'Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful spring
Of woes unnumbered, heavenly goddess, sing!'"

The three books stood on the bookshelf in the schoolroom, the thin Shakespeare in diamond print, the small brown leather Milton, the very small fat Pope's Iliad in the red cover. Mark gave them to her for her own.

She made Catty put her bed between the two windows, and Mark made a bookshelf out of a piece of wood and some picture cord, and hung it within reach. She had a happy, excited feeling when she thought of the three books; it made her wake early. She read from five o'clock till Catty called her at seven, and again after Catty had tucked her up and left her, till the white light in the room was grey.

She learnt Lycidas by heart, and

"I thought I saw my late espoused wife
Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave,"—

and the bits about Satan in Paradise Lost. The sound of the lines gave her the same nice feeling that she had when Mrs. Propart played the March in Scipio after Evening Service. She tried to make lines of her own that went the same way as the lines in Milton and Shakespeare and Pope's Iliad. She found out that there was nothing she liked so much as making these lines. It was nicer even than playing the Hungarian March. She thought it was funny that the lines like Pope's Iliad came easiest, though they had to rhyme.

"Silent he wandered by the sounding sea," was good, but the Greek line that Mark showed her went: "Be d'akeon para thina poluphloisboio thalasses"; that was better. "Don't you think so, Mark?"

"Clever Minx. Much better."

"Mark—if God knew how happy I am writing poetry he'd make the earth open and swallow me up."

Mark only said, "You mustn't say that to Mamma. Play 'Violetta.'"

Of all hateful and disgusting tunes the most disgusting and the most hateful was "Violetta," which Mr. Sippett's sister taught her. But if Mark would promise to make Mamma let her learn Greek she would play it to him twenty times running.

When Mark went to Chelmsted that autumn he left her his brown Greek Accidence and Smith's Classical Dictionary, besides Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome. She taught herself Greek in the hour after breakfast before Miss Sippett came to give her her music lesson. She was always careful to leave the Accidence open where Miss Sippett could see it and realise that she was not a stupid little girl.

But whether Miss Sippett saw the Accidence or not she always behaved as if it wasn't there.

III.

When Mamma saw the Accidence open on the drawing-room table she shut it and told you to put it in its proper place. If you talked about it her mouth buttoned up tight, and her eyes blinked, and she began tapping with her foot.

There was something queer about learning Greek. Mamma did not actually forbid it; but she said it must not be done in lesson time or sewing time, or when people could see you doing it, lest they should think you were showing off. You could see that she didn't believe you could learn Greek and that she wouldn't like it if you did. But when lessons were over she let you read Shakespeare or Pope's Iliad aloud to her while she sewed. And when you could say:

"Lars Porsena of Clusium
By the nine Gods he swore"—

straight through without stopping she went into London with Papa and brought back the Child's First History of Rome. A Pinnock's Catechism of Mythology in a blue paper cover went with the history to tell you all about the gods and goddesses. What Pinnock didn't tell you you found out from Smith's Classical Dictionary. It had pictures in it so beautiful that you were happy just sitting still and looking at them. There was such a lot of gods and goddesses that at first they were rather hard to remember. But you couldn't forget Apollo and Hermes and Aphrodite and Pallas Athene and Diana. They were not like Jehovah. They quarrelled sometimes, but they didn't hate each other; not as Jehovah hated all the other gods. They fitted in somehow. They cared for all the things you liked best: trees and animals and poetry and music and running races and playing games. Even Zeus was nicer than Jehovah, though he reminded you of him now and then. He liked sacrifices. But then he was honest about it. He didn't pretend that he was good and that he had to have them because of your sins. And you hadn't got to believe in him. That was the nicest thing of all.

X

I.

Mary was ten in eighteen seventy-three.

Aunt Charlotte was ill, and nobody was being kind to her. She had given her Sunday bonnet to Harriet and her Sunday gown to Catty; so you knew she was going to be married again. She said it was prophesied that she should be married in eighteen seventy-three.

The illness had something to do with being married and going continually to Mr. Marriott's church and calling on Mr. Marriott and writing letters to him about religion. You couldn't say Aunt Charlotte was not religious. But Papa said he would believe in her religion if she went to Mr. Batty's church or Mr. Farmer's or Mr. Propart's. They had all got wives and Mr. Marriott hadn't. Papa had forbidden Aunt Charlotte to go any more to Mr. Marriott's church.

Mr. Marriott had written a nice letter to Uncle Victor, and Uncle Victor had taken Papa to see him, and the doctor had come to see Aunt Charlotte and she had been sent to bed.

Aunt Charlotte's room was at the top of the tall, thin white house in the High Street. There was whispering on the stairs. Mamma and Aunt Lavvy stood at the turn; you could see their vexed faces. Aunt Charlotte called to them to let Mary come to her. Mary was told she might go if she were very quiet.

Aunt Charlotte was all by herself sitting up in a large white bed. A Bible propped itself open, leaves downwards, against the mound she made. There was something startling about the lengths of white curtain and the stretches of white pillow and counterpane, and Aunt Charlotte's very black eyebrows and hair and the cover of the Bible, very black, and her blue eyes glittering.

She was writing letters. Every now and then she took up the Bible and picked out a text and wrote it down. She wrote very fast, and as she finished each sheet she hid it under the bed-clothes, and made a sign to show that what she was doing was a secret.

"Love God and you'll be happy. Love God and you'll be happy," she said.

Her eyes pointed at you. They looked wise and solemn and excited.

A wide flat piece of counterpane was left over from Aunt Charlotte. Mary climbed up and sat in it with her back against the foot-rail and looked at her. Looking at Aunt Charlotte made you think of being born.

"Aunt Charlotte, do you know what being born is?"

Aunt Charlotte looked up under her eyebrows, and hid another sheet of paper. "What's put that in your head all of a sudden?"

"It's because of my babies. Catty says I couldn't have thirteen all under three years old. But I could, couldn't I?"

"I'm afraid I don't think you could," Aunt Charlotte said.

"Why not? Catty won't say why."

Aunt Charlotte shook her head, but she was smiling and looking wiser and more solemn than ever. "You mustn't ask too many questions," she said.

"But you haven't told me what being born is. I know it's got something to do with the Virgin Mary."

Aunt Charlotte said, "Sh-sh-sh! You mustn't say that. Nice little girls don't think about those things."

Her tilted eyes had turned down and her mouth had stopped smiling. So you knew that being born was not frightening. It had something to do with the things you didn't talk about.

And ye—how could it? There was the Virgin Mary.

"Aunt Charlotte, don't you wish you had a baby?"

Aunt Charlotte looked frightened, suddenly, and began to cry.

"You mustn't say it, Mary, you mustn't say it. Don't tell them you said it. They'll think I've been talking about the babies. The little babies. Don't tell them. Promise me you won't tell."

II.

"Aunt Lavvy—I wish I knew what you thought about Jehovah?"

When Aunt Lavvy stayed with you Mamma made you promise not to ask her about her opinions. But sometimes you forgot. Aunt Lavvy looked more than ever as if she was by herself in a quiet empty room, thinking of something that wasn't there. You couldn't help feeling that she knew things. Mamma said she had always been the clever one, just as Aunt Charlotte had always been the queer one; but Aunt Bella said she was no better than an unbeliever, because she was a Unitarian at heart.

"Why Jehovah in particular?" Aunt Lavvy was like Uncle Victor; she listened politely when you talked to her, as if you were saying something interesting.

"Because he's the one you've got to believe in. Do you really think he is so very good?"

"I don't think anything. I don't know anything, except that God is love."

"Jehovah wasn't."

"Jehovah—" Aunt Lavvy stopped herself. "I mustn't talk to you about it—because I promised your mother I wouldn't."

It was very queer. Aunt Lavvy's opinions had something to do with religion, yet Mamma said you mustn't talk about them.

"I promised, too. I shall have to confess and ask her to forgive me."

"Then," said Aunt Lavvy, "be sure you tell her that I didn't talk to you.
Promise me you'll tell her."

That was what Aunt Charlotte had said. Talking about religion was like talking about being born.

XI

I.

Nobody has any innate ideas. Children and savages and idiots haven't any, so grown-up people can't have, Mr. Locke says.

But how did he know? You might have them and forget about them, and only remember again after you were grown up.

She sat up in the drawing-room till nine o'clock now, because she was eleven years old. She had taken the doll's clothes out of the old wooden box and filled it with books: the Bible, Milton, and Pope's Homer, the Greek Accidence, and Plutarch's Lives, and the Comedies from Papa's illustrated Shakespeare in seven volumes, which he never read, and two volumes of Pepys' Diary, and Locke On the Human Understanding. She wished the Bible had been bound in pink calf like Pepys instead of the shiny black leather that made you think of wet goloshes. Then it would have looked new and exciting like the other books.

She sat on a footstool with her box beside her in the corner behind Mamma's chair. She had to hide there because Mamma didn't believe you really liked reading. She thought you were only shamming and showing off. Sometimes Mr. and Mrs. Farmer would come in, and Mr. Farmer would play chess with Papa while Mrs. Farmer talked to Mamma about how troublesome and independent the tradespeople were, and how hard it was to get servants and to keep them. Mamma listened to Mrs. Farmer as if she were saying something wonderful and exciting. Sometimes it would be the Proparts; or Mr. Batty would come in alone. And sometimes they would all come together with the aunts and uncles, and there would be a party.

Mary always hoped that Uncle Victor would notice her and say, "Mary is reading Locke On the Human Understanding," or that Mr. Propart would come and turn over the books and make some interesting remark. But they never did.

At half-past eight Catty would bring in the tea-tray; the white and grey and gold tea-cups would be set out round the bulging silver tea-pot that lifted up its spout with a foolish, pompous expression, like a hen. Mamma would move about the table in her mauve silk gown, and there would be a scent of cream and strong tea. Every now and then the shimmering silk and the rich scent would come between her and the grey, tight-pressed, difficult page.

"'The senses at first let in particular ideas and furnish the yet empty cabinet: and the mind growing by degrees familiar with some of them, they are lodged in the memory and names got to them.'

"Then how—Then how?—"

The thought she thought was coming wouldn't come, and Mamma was telling her to get up and hand round the bread and butter.

II.

"Mr. Ponsonby, do you remember your innate ideas?"

"My how much?" said Mr. Ponsonby.

"The ideas you had before you were born?"

Mr. Ponsonby said, "Before I was born? Well—" He really seemed to be considering it.

Mamma's chair, pushed further along the hearthrug, had driven her back and back, till the box was hidden behind the curtain.

Mr. Ponsonby was Mark's friend. Mark was at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich now. Every Saturday Mr. Ponsonby came home with Mark and stayed till Sunday evening. You knew that sooner or later he would find you out behind Mamma's chair.

"I mean," she said, "the ideas you were born with."

"Seems to me," said Mr. Ponsonby, "I was born with precious few. Anyhow I can't say I remember them."

"I was afraid you'd say that. It's what Mr. Locke says."

"Mr. how much?"

"Mr. Locke. You can look at him if you like."

She thought: "He won't. He won't. They never, never do."

But Mr. Ponsonby did. He looked at Mr. Locke, and he looked at Mary, and he said, "By Gum!" He even read the bits about the baby and the empty cabinet.

"You don't mean to say you like this sort of thing?"

"I like it most awfully. Of course I don't mean as much as brook-jumping, but almost as much."

And Mr. Ponsonby said, "Well—I must say—of all—you are—by Gum!"

He made it sound like the most delicious praise.

Mr. Ponsonby was taller and older than Mark. He was nineteen. She thought he was the nicest looking person she had ever seen.

His face was the colour of thick white honey; his hair was very dark, and he had long blue eyes and long black eyebrows like bars, drawn close down on to the blue. His nose would have been hooky if it hadn't been so straight, and his mouth was quiet and serious. When he talked to you his mouth and eyes looked as if they liked it.

Mark came and said, "Minky, if you stodge like that you'll get all flabby."

It wasn't nice of Mark to say that before Mr. Ponsonby, when he knew perfectly well that she could jump her own height.

"Me flabby? Feel my muscle."

It rose up hard under her soft skin.

"Feel it, Mr. Ponsonby."

"I say—what a biceps!"

"Yes, but," Mark said, "you should feel his."

His was even bigger and harder than Mark's. "Mine," she said sorrowfully, "will never be as good as his."

Then Mamma came and told her it was bed-time, and Mr. Ponsonby said, "Oh,
Mrs. Olivier, not yet."

"Five minutes more, then."

But the five minutes were never any good. You just sat counting them.

And when it was all over and Mr. Ponsonby strode across the drawing-room and opened the door for her she went laughing; she stood in the doorway and laughed. When you were sent to bed at nine the only dignified thing was to pretend you didn't care.

And Mr. Ponsonby, holding the door so that Mamma couldn't see him, looked at her and shook his head, as much as to say, "You and I know it isn't a joke for either of us, this unrighteous banishment."

III.

"What on earth are you doing?"

She might have known that some day Mamma would come up and find her putting the children to bed.

She had seven. There was Isabel Batty, and Mrs. Farmer's red-haired baby, and Mark in the blue frock in the picture when he was four, and Dank in his white frock and blue sash, and the three very little babies you made up out of your head. Six o'clock was their bed-time.

"You'd no business to touch those baby-clothes," Mamma said.

The baby-clothes were real. Every evening she took them from the drawer in the linen cupboard; and when she had sung the children to sleep she shook out the little frocks and petticoats and folded them in a neat pile at the foot of the bed.

"I thought you were in the schoolroom learning your lessons?"

"So I was, Mamma. But—you know—six o'clock is their bed-time."

"Oh Mary! you told me you'd given up that silly game."

"So I did. But they won't let me. They don't want me to give them up."

Mamma sat down, as if it was too much for her.

"I hope," she said, "you don't talk to Catty or anybody about it."

"No, Mamma. I couldn't. They're my secret."

"That was all very well when you were a little thing. But a great girl of twelve—You ought to be ashamed of yourself."

Mamma had gone. She had taken away the baby-clothes. Mary lay face downwards on her bed.

Shame burned through her body like fire. Hot tears scalded her eyelids. She thought: "How was I to know you mustn't have babies?" Still, she couldn't give them all up. She must keep Isabel and the red-haired baby.

But what would Mr. Ponsonby think of her if he knew?

IV.

"Mr. Ponsonby. Mr. Ponsonby! Stay where you are and look!"

From the window at the end of the top corridor the side of the house went sheer down into the lane. Mary was at the window. Mr. Ponsonby was in the lane.

She climbed on to the ledge and knelt there. Grasping the bottom of the window frame firmly with both hands and letting her knees slide from the ledge, she lowered herself, and hung for one ecstatic moment, and drew herself up again by her arms.

"What did you do it for, Mary?"

Mr. Ponsonby had rushed up the stairs and they were sitting there. He was so tall that he hung over her when he leaned.

"It's nothing. You ought to be able to pull up your own weight."

"You mustn't do it from top-storey windows. It's dangerous."

"Not if you've practised on the banisters first. Where's Mark?"

"With your Mater. I say, supposing you and I go for a walk."

"We must be back at six o'clock," she said.

When you went for walks with Mark or Mr. Ponsonby they always raced you down Ley Street and over the ford at the bottom. They both gave you the same start to the Horn's Tavern; the only difference was that with Mr. Ponsonby you were over the ford first.

They turned at the ford into the field path that led to Drake's Farm and the plantation. He jumped all the stiles and she vaulted them. She could see that he respected her. And so they came to the big water jump into the plantation. Mr. Ponsonby went over first and held out his arms. She hurled herself forward and he caught her. And this time, instead of putting her down instantly, he lifted her up in his arms and held her tight and kissed her. Her heart thumped violently and she had a sudden happy feeling. Neither spoke.

Humphrey Propart had kissed her once for a forfeit. And she had boxed his ears. Mr. Ponsonby's was a different sort of kiss.

They tore through the plantation as if nothing had happened, clearing all the brooks in a business-like way. Mr. Ponsonby took brook-jumping as the serious and delightful thing it was.

Going home across the fields they held each other's hands, like children. "Minky," he said, "I don't like to think of you hanging out of top-storey windows."

"But it's so jolly to feel your body come squirming up after your arms."

"It is. It is. All the same, promise me you won't do it any more."

"Why?"

"Because I'm going to India when I've passed out, and I want to find you alive when I come back. Promise me, Minky."

"I will, if you're really going. But you're the only person I allow to call me Minky, except Mark."

"Am I? I'm glad I'm the only person."

They went on.

"I'm afraid," she said, "my hand is getting very hot and horrid."

He held it tighter. "I don't care how hot and horrid it gets. And I think you might call me Jimmy."