He had seemed so peering a guest at Brunswick House. Mrs. Monnerie hadn’t so much as glanced at him when he had commented on Mrs. Browning’s poems. There seemed to be a shadow over whatever he did. It was as though there could be a sadness in the very coursing of one’s blood. How thankful I felt that mine hadn’t been a really flattering reply to Mrs. Monnerie’s question. She was extremely arrogant, even for a younger daughter of a lord. On the other hand, though, of course, the sheer novelty of me had had something to do with it, she had certainly singled me out afterwards to know what I thought, and in thoughts there is no particular size, only effusiveness—no, piercingness. I smiled to myself at the word, pitied my godmother for living so sequestered a life, and wondered how and why it was that my father and mother had so obstinately shut me away from the world. If only Fanny was coming home—what a difference she would find in her fretful Midge! And with that, I discovered that my feet were cold and that my headache had ached itself away.
XXVI
There had been no need to reserve the small hours for these ruminations. The next few days were wet and windy; every glance at the streaming panes cast my mind into a sort of vacancy. The wind trumpeted smoke into the room; I could fix my mind on nothing. Then the weather faired. There came “a red sky at night,” and Spica flashing secrets to me across the darkness; and that suppertime I referred as casually as possible to Mr. Anon.
“I suppose one must keep one’s promises, Mrs. Bowater, even to a stranger. Would half-past six be too early to keep mine, do you think? Would it look too—forward? Of course he may have forgotten all about me by this time.”
Mrs. Bowater eyed me like an owl as I bent my cheeks over my bowl of bread and milk, and proceeded to preach me yet another little sermon on the ways of the world. Nevertheless, the next morning saw us setting out together in the crisp, sparkling air to my tryst, with the tacit understanding that she accompanied me rather in the cause of propriety than romance.
Owing, I fancy, to a bunion, she was so leisurely a walker that it was I who must set my pace to hers. But the day promised to be warm, and we could take our ease. As we wandered on among the early flowers and bright, green grass, and under the beeches, a mildness lightened into her face. Over her long features lay a vacant yet happy smile, of which she seemed to be unaware. This set me off thinking in the old, old fashion; comparing my lot with that of ordinary human beings. How fortunate I was. If only she could have seen the lowlier plants as I could—scarcely looking down on any, and of the same stature as some among the taller of them, so that the air around me was dyed and illumined with their clear colours, and burdened with their breath.
The least and humblest of them—not merely crisp-edged lichen, speckle-seed whitlow-grass and hyssop in the wall—are so close to earth, the wonder, indeed, is that common-sized people ever see them at all. They must, at any rate, I thought, commit themselves to their stomachs, or go down on their knees to see them properly. So, on we went, Mrs. Bowater and I, she pursuing her private musings, and I mine.
I smiled to myself at remembrance of Dr. Phelps and his blushes. After all, if humanity should “dwindle into a delicate littleness,” it would make a good deal more difference than he had supposed. What a destruction would ensue, among all the lesser creatures of the earth, the squirrels, moles, voles, hedgehogs, and the birds, not to mention the bees and hornets. They would be the enemies then—the traps and poisons and the nets! No more billowy cornfields a good yard high, no more fine nine-foot hedges flinging their blossoms into the air. And all the long-legged, “doubled,” bloated garden flowers, gone clean out of favour. It would be a little world, would it be a happier? The dwarfed Mrs. Bowaters, Dr. Phelpses, Miss Bullaces, Lady Pollackes.
But there was little chance of such an eventuality—at least in my lifetime. It was far likelier that the Miss M.’s of the world would continue to be a byplay. Yet, as I glanced up at my companion, and called to mind other such “Lapland Giants” of mine, I can truthfully avouch that I did not much envy their extra inches. So much more thin-skinned surface to be kept warm and unscratched. The cumbersome bones, the curious distance from foot and fingertip to brain, too; and those quarts and quarts of blood. I shuddered. It was little short of a miracle that they escaped continual injury; and what
