Ruth had her own comment to make, though she put it as a question which was not meant to be enlightening. She had the appearance, Hannah thought, as she lit the night-light, of a person who has had a severe bout of pain, and lies limp and contented in its cessation. Her face, which softened and hardened so quickly, seemed to have taken on childish contours, but her eyes, drowsy with comfort, kept their look of guarded intelligence.
“Isn’t it wonderful,” she sighed, “not to be as miserable as you thought you were going to be?”
“Is it? I don’t know. I’m never miserable.”
“Well, you must have been, often, when you were young.”
“There was always something else,” Hannah said. “There’s always something else, when you look for it. But no, I wasn’t unhappy when I was young. There were my boots, of course, but there were the feet inside them and, you know, if I’d had the kind of boots I wanted, my feet wouldn’t have been so pretty now, and I suppose I realised, even then, that it was all for the best. I’ve always been good at that.”
“You’re very conceited about your feet. And people don’t notice feet much.”
“What does that matter to me? I notice them myself, and every night I have a little reception for them. They sit at one end of the bed and I sit at the other and I look at my nice straight toes and all the little bones of my feet and think of the manifold works of God. It’s not conceit. I didn’t make them.”
“But you like them more because they’re yours than you would if they were mine.”
“Perhaps; they’re such a surprise. My father and mother had honest yeomen’s feet and so has Lilla.”
“Lilla? That’s Mrs. Spenser-Smith’s name.”
“Did I say Lilla? I meant Hilda.”
“Who’s she?”
“Oh, she’s a cousin, rather a mysterious cousin. I’ll tell you about her some day. She was better looking than me, but not much, and her feet were ugly. Nice hands, though, and she used to say that if she and I could pick out our best features, we might make one quite decent-looking woman of us.”
“Is she alive now?”
“Good gracious, yes, I hope so. Somewhere. She’s no older than I am, but I haven’t seen her for years. Elusive creature,” Hannah said, staring at the little flame of the night-light.
“Go on about her.”
“Not now. Good night.”
“Moley …” this was Ruth’s question, “was Father angry when you took in his tea? I know he was furious with Uncle Jim, because we heard him shouting, and I never thought he’d come in and be so nice to us.”
“But as it wasn’t your fault, why should he be angry with you?”
Ruth made no reply to that; there was none to make and she did not refer to past experience. It was plain to Hannah that Ruth was giving credit where credit was due, and it was sad that she should have to look beyond her father’s character for the cause of his unexpected gentleness. “Well, I hope he’ll stop being angry with Uncle Jim,” she said. “I’ll tell you what I’ve decided. I shall go out to South Africa, to be with Howard, as soon as I can.”
“And what about me?”
“Couldn’t you stay and look after Father?”
“I’m here to look after you because you’re such a baby and can’t mend your own stockings. As soon as you can, I shall go.”
“Is that why you haven’t tried to make me do it?” Ruth asked slyly. “And why shouldn’t you come too?”
“I don’t know why I didn’t go years ago,” Hannah said. “What a fool I’ve been!”
“There was your little house.”
“Yes,” she said, “perhaps that had something to do with keeping me, but there, I never had enough money to pay my fare and I never shall have.”
“That’s because you’re so extravagant about your shoes,” Ruth said pertly. “And that reminds me. There’s the story about breaking the window, and now there’s your cousin Hilda. You’re always promising and never telling.”
“I can’t tell you about the window because the story isn’t finished. Neither is the one about Cousin Hilda, for that matter. Stories don’t finish. The window one is coming to what you might call a period, but not an end. No indeed. I fancy that Part Two will be less exciting but more enthralling to the student of human nature than Part One. Really good biographies can’t be written until the what-you-may-call-thems are dead. But I might tell you when we’re in South Africa—far away.”
“Couldn’t you just give me a hint about why you broke the window? Was it in Radstowe?”
“Not a hint,” Hannah said. “Why can’t you make up some stories for yourself? That’s what I have to do.”
“But these are true, aren’t they?” Ruth cried anxiously. “Not like the burglar one?”
“Not in the least like the burglar one. And now, sleep. If you’re going to South Africa, you must take a profession
