"Tell her that Mr. Jourdain was right and that I am not at all unhappy."
She was glad to take the letter to the post and set his mind at rest.
It was in June last year that Maurice Jourdain had come to her: June the
twenty-fourth. To-day was the twenty-fifth. He must have remembered.
The hayfields shone, ready for mowing. Under the wind the shimmering hay
grass moved like waves of hot air, up and up the hill.
She slipped through the gap by Morfe Bridge and went up the fields to the
road on Greffington Edge. She lay down among the bracken in the place
where Roddy and she had sat two years ago when they had met Mr. Sutcliffe
coming down the road.
The bracken hid her. It made a green sunshade above her head. She shut
her eyes.
"Kikeriküh! sie glaubten
Es wäre Hahnen geschrei."
That was all nonsense. Maurice Jourdain would never have crept in the
little hen-house and hidden himself under the straw. He would never have
crowed like a cock. Mark and Roddy would. And Harry Craven and Jimmy.
Jimmy would certainly have hidden himself under the straw.
Supposing Jimmy had had a crystal mind. Shining and flashing. Supposing
he had never done that awful thing they said he did. Supposing he had had
Mark's ways, had been noble and honourable like Mark--
The interminable reverie began. He was there beside her in the bracken.
She didn't know what his name would be. It couldn't be Jimmy or Harry or
any of those names. Not Mark. Mark's name was sacred.
Cecil, perhaps.
_Why_ Cecil? _Cecil_?--You ape! You drivelling, dribbling idiot! That was
the sort of thing Aunt Charlotte would have thought of.
She got up with a jump and stretched herself. She would have to run if
she was to be home in time for tea.
From the top hayfield she could see the Sutcliffes' tennis court; an
emerald green space set in thick grey walls. She drew her left hand
slowly down her right forearm. The muscle was hardening and thickening.
Mamma didn't like it when you went by yourself to play singles with Mr.
Sutcliffe. But if Mr. Sutcliffe asked you you would simply have to go.
You would have to play a great many singles against Mr. Sutcliffe if you
were to be in good form next year when Mark came home.