"Minx! Minx! Minx!"
Mark had come in from the garden with Mamma. He was calling to Mary. Minx
was the name he had given her. Minx was a pretty name and she loved it
because he had given it her. Whenever she heard him call she left what
she was doing and ran to him.
Papa came out of the library with Boag's Dictionary open in his hand.
"'Minx: A pert, wanton girl. A she-puppy.' Do you hear that, Caroline? He
calls his sister a wanton she-puppy." But Mamma had gone back into the
garden.
Mark stood at the foot of the stairs and Mary stood at the turn. She had
one hand on the rail of the banister, the other pressed hard against the
wall. She leaned forward on tiptoe, measuring her distance. When she
looked at the stairs they fell from under her in a grey dizziness, so
that Mark looked very far away.
They waited till Papa had gone back into the library--Mark held out his
arms.
"Jump, Minky! Jump!"
She let go the rail and drew herself up. A delicious thrill of danger
went through her and out at her fingers. She flung herself into space and
Mark caught her. His body felt hard and strong as it received her. They
did it again and again.
That was the "faith-jump." You knew that you would be killed if Mark
didn't catch you, but you had faith that he would catch you; and he
always did.
Mark and Dan were going to school at Chelmsted on the thirteenth of
September, and it was the last week in August now. Mark and Mamma were
always looking for each other. Mamma would come running up to the
schoolroom and say, "Where's Mark? Tell Mark I want him"; and Mark would
go into the garden and say, "Where's Mamma? I want her." And Mamma would
put away her trowel and gardening gloves and go walks with him which she
hated; and Mark would leave Napoleon Buonaparte and the plan of the
Battle of Austerlitz to dig in the garden (and he loathed digging) with
Mamma.
This afternoon he had called to Mary to come out brook-jumping. Mark
could jump all the brooks in the fields between Ilford and Barkingside,
and in the plantations beyond Drake's Farm; he could jump the Pool of
Siloam where the water from the plantations runs into the lake below
Vinings. Where there was no place for a little girl of seven to cross he
carried her in his arms and jumped. He would stand outside in the lane
and put his hands on the wall and turn heels over head into the garden.
She said to herself: "In six years and five months I shall be fourteen. I
shall jump the Pool of Siloam and come into the garden head over heels."
And Mamma called her a little humbug when she said she was afraid to go
for a walk with Jenny lest a funeral should be coming along the road.