“Jenoash,” responded Sybil, and they both laughed drunkenly.
“What I’m finking,” said the boy, putting a teaspoonful of jam into his teacup and speaking with a stammering difficulty that drew deep lines in his thin face; “what’s worrying me is she’ll have Rollo after tea instead of us. … Vat’s what I’m finking.”
“D’you like bays?” said Sybil, throwing a fleeting glance in the direction of Miriam.
“Yes, I do, I think,” said Miriam at random, patting her hair and wondering if the children had been to Weymouth.
“Oh, Boy.” Sybil flung her arms tightly round her thin body and sat grinning at her brother. Her old blue and white striped overall, her sparse hair and the ugly large gap between her two large front teeth seemed to set her apart from her surroundings. For a moment it seemed to Miriam that the large quiet room looking through two high windows on to a stretch of tree-shaded lawn, the cheerful little spread of delicate white china at one end of the long table, the preserves and cakes, the cress sandwiches and thin bread and butter were all there for her appreciation alone, the children somehow profane and accidental, having no right to be there. But they had been in these surroundings, the girl for twelve the boy for eight years. They had never known anything else. For years life had been for them just what it was today—breakfast in bed, chirping at their mother from the dressing-rooms where they slept, and scolding at Stokes as she waited on their toilet; jocularly and impatiently learning lessons from little textbooks for an hour or so in the morning, spending their afternoons cantering about the commons and along the sandy roadways with the groom; driving with their mother or walking with the governess and every day coming in at the end of the afternoon to this cosy, dainty grown-up tea, with their strange untroubled brooding faces. They would grow up and be exactly like their parents. They did not know anything about their fate. It was a kind of prison. Perhaps they knew. Perhaps that was what they were always brooding over. No, they did not mind. Their musings were tranquil. They were waiting. They had silent conversations all the time. To be with them after being so long with the straining, determined, secretly ambitious children at Banbury Park was a great relief … the way they moved their heads and used their hands … the boy’s hands were wonderful, the palest fine brown silk, quick eloquent little claws, promising understanding and support. Fine little hands and steady gentle brown eyes.
“Bays.”
“Bright bays.”
“Roans.”
“Strawberry roans.”
“Chestnuts.”
“Chestnut bays.”
The children sat facing each other, each with clasped hands, and eyes lit with dreams. Miriam listened. Bay, then, must be that curious liver colour that was neither brown nor chestnut.
“Our ponies are bay,” said Sybil quickly, with flushed face. “Boy’s and mine, the brougham and victoria horses are chestnut bays and we’ve got two dogs, a whippet bitch, she’s in the stables now, and a Great Dane; I’m going to have a Willoughby pug pup on my birthday.”
Mrs. Corrie was standing in the hall when the little tea-party came out of the dining-room. She raised her head and stood shaped in the well-cut lines of her long brown and fawn check coat and skirt against the bead curtain that led to the drawing-room, looking across at them. The boy tottered blindly across the hall with arms outstretched. “Oh, Rollo, Rollo,” he said brokenly, as he reached her, pressing his hands up against her grey suède waistcoat and his face into her skirt, “are we going to h‑ave you?”
Mrs. Corrie began singing in a thin laughing voice, taking the boy by the wrists.
“No, no,” he said sharply, “let me hold you a minute.” But Mrs. Corrie danced, forcing his steps as he pressed against her. Up and down the hall they capered while Sybil pranced round them whirling her skirts and clapping her hands. Miriam sank into a settee. The cold March sunlight streaming in through the thinly curtained windows painted the sharply bobbing figures in faint shadows on the wall opposite her.
When the dancers were breathless the little party strayed into the drawing-room. Presently they were gathered at the piano. Mrs. Corrie sat on a striped ottoman and peering closely picked out the airs of songs that made Miriam stare in amazement. They all sang. Slowly and stumblingly with many gasps of annoyance from Mrs. Corrie and the children violently assaulting each other whenever either of them got ahead of the halting accompaniment, they sang through all the songs in an album with a brightly decorated paper cover. But in their performance there was no tune, no rhythm, and the words spoken out slowly and separately were intolerable to her. One song they sang three times. Its chorus
Stiboo‑stibee,
Sti‑ibbety-oo
Sti‑ibbety-boo,
Stibee,
which Sybil could sing without the piano with an extraordinary flourishing rapidity, pirouetting as she sang, they attacked again and again, slowly and waveringly, fitting the syllables note by note into the printed line of disconnected jerkily tailed quavers. … They thought this was music. Encouraged at last by the fervour of the halting performance Miriam found herself seated at the piano attacking the score. They went through the songs from the beginning, three thin blissful wavering tremulous voices, with a careful perfect monotony of emphasis, uninfluenced by any variation of accent or inflection introduced by Miriam into the accompaniment. Looking round as they reached the end she saw flushed rapt faces with happy eyes gleaming through the gathering twilight. They smiled at her as they sang. When they had finished they lit the piano candles and sang “Stiboo” once more.
“Sti‑boo, stibee, sti‑ibbety‑oo, sti‑ibbety boo, stibee,” sang Miriam,
