Part 48 (1/2)

”Why not?”

”Because she would be such a _very_ great humbug, don't you see, chick?”

”Why shouldn't she? Somebody must, or there'd be no such thing.”

”Why should there be any such thing?”

”Because of the word. Somebody must, or there'd be no one to hook it to.... Have they stopped, I wonder, or are they going to begin again?”

This referred to the Ethiopian banjos afar. ”I do declare they're going to sing Pesky Jane, and it's nearly twelve o'clock!”

”Never mind _them_! How came _you_ to know all the vulgar n.i.g.g.e.r-songs?... I was going to say. It's very difficult to believe it's quite all humbug when one hears her talk about her son and his welfare, and his prospects and....”

”I know what she talked about. When her dear son marries, she's going to devote herself to him and her dear daughter that will be. Wasn't that it?”

”Yes; but then she couldn't say more than that all she had would be theirs, and she would take her to her bosom, etcetera. Could she?”

”She'll have to pull a long way!” The vulgar child's mind has flown straight to the Goody's outline in profile. She is quite incorrigible.

”But wasn't that what old Mr. Turveydrop said, or very nearly? Of course, one has to consider the parties and make allowance.”

”Sallykin, what a madcap you are! You don't care _what_ you say.”

”We-e-ell! there's nothing in that.... But look here, mammy darling.

Did that good woman in all she said to-night--all the time she was jawing--did she once lose sight of her meritorious att.i.tude?”

”It may only be a _facon de parler_--a sort of habit.”

”But it isn't. Jeremiah says so. We've talked it over, us two. He says he wouldn't like his daughter--meaning me--to marry poor Prosy, because of the Goody.”

”Are you sure he meant you? Did you ask him?”

”No, because I wasn't going to twit Jeremiah with being only step.

We kept it dark who was what. But, of course, he meant me. Like a submarine telegraph.” Sally stopped a moment in gravity. Then she said: ”Mother dear!”

”What, kitten?”

”What a pity it is Jeremiah is only step! Just think how nice if he'd been real. Now, if you'd only met twenty years sooner....”

A nettle to grasp presented itself--a bad one. Rosalind seized it bodily. ”I shouldn't have had my kitten,” she said.

”I see. I should have been somebody else. But that wouldn't have mattered to me.”

”It would have--to me!” But this is the most she can do in the way of nettle-grasping. She is glad when St. Sennan, from his tower with the undoubted piece of Norman, begins to count twelve, and gives her an excuse for a recall to duty. ”Do think how we're keeping poor Mrs.

Lobjoit up, you unfeeling child!” is her appeal on behalf of their own fisherman's wife. Sally is just taking note of a finale of the Ethiop choir. ”They've done Pesky Jane, and they're going away to bed,” she says. ”How the black must come off on the sheets!” And then they hurried home to sleep sound.

But there was little sleep for the doctor that night, perhaps because he had got so young all of a sudden. So it didn't matter much that his mother countermanded his proposal that bed should be gone to, on the ground that it was so late now that she wouldn't be able to sleep a wink. If she _could_ have gone an hour ago it would have been different. Now it was too late. An aggressive submissiveness was utilized by the good lady to the end of his discomfort and that of Mrs. Iggulden, who--perhaps from some memories of the Norman Conquest hanging about the neighbourhood--would never go to bed as long as a light was burning in the house.

”It is very strange and most unusual, I know,” she continued saying after she had scarified a place to scratch on. ”Your great-uncle Everett Gayler did not scruple to call it phenomenal, and that when I was the merest child. After eleven no sleep!” She continued her knitting with tenacity to ill.u.s.trate her wakefulness. ”But I am glad, dear Conrad, that you forgot about me. You were in pleasanter society than your old mother's. No one shall have any excuse for saying I am a burden on my son. No, my dear boy, my wish is that you shall feel _free_.” She laid aside the knitting needles, and folding her hands across the outline Sally was to be dragged up, or along, dropped her eyelids over a meek glare, and sat with a fixed, submissive undersmile slightly turned towards her son.

”But I thought, mother, as Mrs. Fenwick was here....” Slow, slight, acquiescent nods stopped him; they were enough to derail any speech except the multiplication-table or the House-that-Jack-built! But she waited with exemplary patience for certainty that the train had stopped. Then spoke as one that gives a commission to speech, and observes its execution at a distance. Her expression remained immutable. ”She is a well-meaning person,” said she.