"Well, he's left his ladder in the yard. I suppose that means he'll mend
the kitchen chimney some time before winter."
"The Yorkshire workmen are very independent," Mrs. Waugh said.
"They scamp their work like the rest. You'd need a resident carpenter,
and a resident glazier, and a resident plumber--"
"Yes, Caroline, you would indeed."
Gentle voices saying things you had heard before in the drawing-room at
Five Elms.
Miss Frewin had opened a black silk bag that hung on her arm, and taken
out a minute pair of scissors and a long strip of white stuff with a
stitched pattern on it. She nicked out the pattern into little holes
outlined by the stitches. Mary watched her, fascinated by the delicate
movements of the thin fingers and the slanted, drooping postures of the
head.
"Do you _like_ doing it?"
"Yes."
She thought: "What a fool she must think me. As if she'd do it if she
didn't like it."
The arching eyes and twitching mouth smiled at your foolishness.
Mrs. Waugh's voice went on. It came smoothly, hardly moving her small,
round mouth. That was her natural voice. Then suddenly it rose, like a
voice that calls to you to get up in the morning.
"Well, Mary--so you've left school. Come home to be a help to your
mother."
A high, false cheerfulness, covering disapproval and reproach.
Their gentleness was cold to her and secretly inimical. They had asked
her because of Mamma. They didn't really want her.
Half-past six. It was all over. They were going home across the Green.
"Mary, I wish you could learn to talk without affectation. Telling Mrs.
Waugh you 'looked like yourself'! If you could only manage to forget
yourself."
Your self? Your self? Why should you forget it? You had to remember. They
would kill it if you let them.
What had it done? What _was_ it that they should hate it so? It had been
happy and excited about _them_, wondering what they would be like. And
quiet, looking on and listening, in the strange, green-lighted,
green-dark room, crushed by the gentle, hostile voices.
Would it always have to stoop and cringe before people, hushing its own
voice, hiding its own gesture?
It crouched now, stung and beaten, hiding in her body that walked beside
her mother with proud feet, and small lifted head.