The Charwoman's Daughter

apparent. If a man did a thing twice, the doing of that thing became a habit and a passion, any interference with which provoked him to an unreasoning, bull-like wrath wherein both wives and crockery were equally shattered; and, therefore, a woman had only to observe the personal habits of her beloved and fashion her restrictions according to that standard. This meant that men made the laws and women administered them--a wise allocation of prerogatives, for she conceived that the executive female function was every whit as important as the creative faculty which brought these laws into being. She was quite prepared to leave the creative powers in male hands if they would equally abstain from interference with the subsequent working details, for she was of opinion that in the pursuit of comfort (not entirely to their credit was it said) men were far more anxiously concerned than were women, and they flew to their bourne with an instinct for short cuts wherewith women were totally unacquainted.

But in the young man who had come to lodge with her Mrs. Cafferty discerned a being in whom virtue had concentrated to a degree that almost amounted to a congestion. He had instantly played with the children on their being presented to him: this was the sign of a good nature. Before he was acquainted with her ten minutes he had made four jokes: this was the sign of a pleasant nature; and he sang loudly and unceasingly when he awoke in the morning, which was the unfailing index to a happy nature. Moreover, he ate the meals provided for him without any of that particular, tedious examination which is so insulting, and had complimented Mrs. Cafferty on an ability to put a taste on food which she was pleased to obtain recognition of.

Both Mary and her mother remarked on these details with an admiration which was as much as either politeness or friendship could expect. Mrs. Makebelieve's solitary method of life had removed her so distantly from youth that information about a young man was almost tonic to her. She had never wished for a second husband, but had often fancied that a son would have been a wonderful joy to her. She considered that a house which had no young man growing up in it was not a house at all, and she believed that a boy would love his mother, if not more than a daughter could, at least with a difference which would be strangely sweet--a rash, impulsive, unquiet love; a love which would continually prove her love to the breaking point; a love that demanded, and demanded with careless assurance, that accepted her goodness as unquestioningly as she accepted the fertility of the earth, and used her knowing blindly and flatteringly how inexhaustively rich her depths were...She could have wept for this; it was priceless beyond kingdoms; the smile on a boy's face lifted her to an exaltation. Her girl was inexpressibly sweet, surely an island in her wide heart, but a little boy...her breasts could have filled with milk for him, him she could have nourished in the rocks and in desert places: he would have been life to her and adventure, a barrier against old age, an incantation against sorrow, a fragrance and a grief and a defiance...

It was quite plain that Mrs. Cafferty was satisfied with this addition to her household, but the profit which she had expected to accrue from his presence was not the liberal one she had in mind when making the preliminary arrangements. For it appeared that the young man had an appetite of which Mrs. Cafferty spoke with the respect proper to something colossal and awesome. A half-loaf did not more than break the back of a hunger which could wriggle disastrously over another half-loaf: so that, instead of being relieved by his advent, she was confronted by a more immediate and desolating bankruptcy than that from which she had attempted to escape. Exactly how to deal with this situation she did not know, and it was really in order to discuss her peculiar case that she had visited Mrs. Makebelieve. She could, of course, have approached the young man and demanded from him an increase of money that would still be equitable to both parties, but she confessed a repugnance to this course. She did not like to upbraid or trouble any one on account of an appetite which was so noteworthy. She disliked, in any event, to raise a question about food: her instinct for hospitality was outraged at the thought, and as she was herself the victim, or the owner, of an appetite which had often placed a strain on her revenues, a fellow-feeling operated still further in mitigation of his disqualification.

Mrs. Makebelieve's advice was that she should stifle the first fierce and indiscriminate cravings of the young man's hunger by a liberal allowance of stirabout, which was a cheap, wholesome, and very satisfying food, and in that way his destruction of more costly victuals would be kept within reasonable limits. Appetite, she held, was largely a matter of youth, and as a boy who was scarcely done growing had no way of modifying his passion for nourishment, it would be a lapse from decency to insult him on so legitimate a failing.

Mrs. Cafferty thought that this might be done, and thanked her friend for the counsel; but Mary, listening to these political matters, conceived Mrs. Cafferty as a person who had no longer any claim to honour, and she pitied the young man whose appetite was thus publicly canvassed, and who might at any moment be turned out of house and home on account of a hunger against which he had no safeguard and no remedy.

XXVII

It was not long until Mary and Mrs. Cafferty's lodger met. As he came in by the hall-door one day Mary was carrying upstairs a large water-bucket, the portage of which two or three