Clara entered, with a curious sidelong movement, half-winning and
half-serpentine. She was aged fourteen, a very fair and very slight
girl, with a thin face and thin lips, and extraordinarily slender hands;
in general appearance fragile. She wore a semi-circular comb on the
crown of her head, and her abundant hair hung over her shoulders in two
tight pigtails. Edwin considered that Clara was harsh and capricious;
he had much fault to find with her; but nevertheless the sight of her
usually affected him pleasurably (of course without his knowing it), and
he never for long sat definitely in adverse judgement upon her. Her
gestures had a charm for him which he felt but did not realise. And
this charm was similar to his own charm. But nothing would have so
surprised him as to learn that he himself had any charm at all. He
would have laughed, and been ashamed--to hear that his gestures and the
play of his features had an ingratiating, awkward, and wistful grace; he
would have tried to cure that.
"Father wants you," said Clara, her hand on the handle of the thin
attic-door hung with odd garments.
Edwin's heart fell instantly, and all the agreeable images of tea
vanished from his mind. His father must have read the school report and
perceived that Edwin had been beaten by Charlie Orgreave, a boy younger
than himself!
"Did he send you up for me?" Edwin asked.
"No," said Clara, frowning. "But I heard him calling out for you all
over. So Maggie told me to run up. Not that I expect any _thanks_." She
put her head forward a little.
The episode, and Clara's tone, showed clearly the nature and force of
the paternal authority in the house. It was an authority with the gift
of getting its commands anticipated.
"All right! I'm coming," said Edwin superiorly.
"I know what you want," Clara said teasingly as she turned towards the
passage.
"What do I want?"
"You want the empty attic all to yourself, and a fine state it would be
in in a month, my word!"
"How do you know I want the empty attic?" Edwin repelled the onslaught;
but he was considerably taken aback. It was a mystery to him how those
girls, and Clara in particular, got wind of his ideas before he had even
formulated them definitely to himself. It was also a mystery to him how
they could be so tremendously interested in matters which did not
concern them.
"You never mind!" Clara gibed, with a smile that was malicious, but
charmingly malicious. "I know!"
She had merely seen him staring into the empty attic, and from that
brief spectacle she had by divination constructed all his plans.
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