But Ally did not come. She had her year-old baby on her knees and was
feeding him.
At the door of the old kitchen Jim grasped his sister-in-law by the
hand.
"Thot's right," he said. "Yo've joost coom in time for a cup o' tae.
T' misses is in there wi' t' lil uns."
He jerked his thumb toward his dining-room and led the way there.
Jim was not quite so alert and slender as he had been. He had lost his
savage grace. But he moved with his old directness and dignity, and he
still looked at you with his pathetic, mystic gaze.
Ally was contrite; she raised her face to her sister to be kissed. "I
can't get up," she said, "I'm feeding Baby. He'd howl if I left off."
"I'd let 'im howl. I'd spank him ef 'twas me," said Jim.
"He wouldn't, Gwenda."
"Ay, thot I would. An' 'e knows it, doos Johnny, t' yoong rascal."
Gwenda kissed the four children; Jimmy, and Gwendolen Alice, and
little Steven and the baby John. They lifted little sticky faces and
wiped them on Gwenda's face, and the happy din went on.
Ally didn't seem to mind it. She had grown plump and pink and rather
like Mary without her subtlety. She sat smiling, tranquil among the
cries of her offspring.
Jim turned three dogs out into the yard by way of discipline. He and
Ally tried to talk to each other across the tumult that remained. Now
and then Ally and the children talked to Gwenda. They told her that
the black and white cow had calved, and that the blue lupins had come
up in the garden, that the old sow had died, that Jenny, the chintz
cat, had kittened and that the lop-eared rabbit had a litter.
"And Baby's got another tooth," said Ally.
"I'm breaakin' in t' yoong chestnut," said Jim. "Poor Daasy's gettin'
paasst 'er work."
All these happenings were exciting and wonderful to Ally.
"But you're not interested, Gwenda."
"I am, darling, I am."
She was. Ally knew it but she wanted perpetual reassurance.
"But you never tell us anything."
"There's nothing to tell. Nothing happens."
"Oh, come," said Ally, "how's Papa?"
"Much the same except that he drove into Morfe yesterday to see
Molly."
"Yes, darling, of course you may."
Ally was abstracted, for Gwenny had slipped from her chair and was
whispering in her ear.
It never occurred to Ally to ask what Gwenda had been doing, or what
she had been thinking of, or what she felt, or to listen to anything
she had to say.
Her sister might just as well not have existed for all the interest
Ally showed in her. She hadn't really forgotten what Gwenda had done
for her, but she couldn't go on thinking about it forever. It was the
sort of thing that wasn't easy or agreeable to think about and Ally's
instinct of self-preservation urged her to turn from it. She tended
to forget it, as she tended to forget all dreadful things, such as
her own terrors and her father's illness and the noises Greatorex made
when he was eating.
Gwenda was used to this apathy of Ally's and it had never hurt her
till to-day. To-day she wanted something from Ally. She didn't know
what it was exactly, but it was something Ally hadn't got.