‘Can I do it? Am I what he thinks me?’
And then I thought:
‘Perhaps I shall love him more than any one, in time.’
People got into the train at the next station. Walter talked
to me about his sister Maud.
He said:
‘I hope so much you will like her’; and I felt behind his words,
the hope, more doubtful, that she might like me.
He said:
‘She is a very remarkable woman; she took a I.I. at Cambridge,
you know, that is not common for women, and she did it all herself.
She was only seventeen when my father died. She was at school
then, of course, and insisted on staying on. My mother would
have taken her away, I think, and gone to live in the country,
but Maud was right. She said it was better for us all, to keep
her on at school, and at college too; she would earn more in
the end, and of course she was right. She paid her own way with
scholarships, all the way up, just as I did afterwards, and she
helped with me too. She kept me up to the mark, and my mother
too. My mother was inclined to spoil me. She thought I was delicate
and that the work at St. Paul’s was too much for me, but Maud
insisted on my working hard, and again, I am sure she was right.
She is not so gentle as my mother, of course, nor so affectionate,
but I admire her very much, and I am grateful to her.’