Chapter XVII

Mrs. Merridew had not been idle. By the same post that she had written to Miss Crampton she had also written to another cousin, a Mrs. Richardson who had a long family and a short purse.

“My dear Grace,

I shall be so glad if you will spare one of your girls on a visit. I think perhaps Miriam if she is free. I think you said that she had left Mrs. Nettleby. It’s a great pity she changes so often. A girl is apt to get a bad name. I hope that entanglement you spoke of is quite over. It doesn’t do when a girl has her way to make, as I told you in the summer when you spoke to me about it. Miss Danesworth has a girl staying with her-you remember she is next door-and her nephew who is in the Army is staying there too. So I thought it would be a pleasant change for Miriam…”

She went on to meticulous enquiries about the whole family.

Mrs. Richardson put down the letter with rather a helpless gesture. She was a large, fair, untidy woman with the vague air of one who is doing her best, but who really can’t see why she should have to do it. She had lost her husband, and though of course she was very sorry, she did find life just a little easier without him. He had been accustomed to so much and had had so little. Every year that they were married he had less, and prices went up and up, and the family grew and grew. Grace Richardson didn’t wish him dead-the idea would have shocked her very much-but she told herself after the funeral that it would be easier to manage now that there wasn’t a man in the house. One of her four girls was adopted by a cousin, and that left three to be provided with clothes, and food, and jobs. Miriam was the eldest. She was also the best-looking. She had curly dark hair, a pair of bold rather staring eyes of a bright blue in colour, and she had a most unfortunate habit of getting into scrapes. She was in a scrape just now. How bad a scrape, she wasn’t quite sure. At almost any other time she would have kicked at going to stay with Cousin Laura, but in the present circumstances it might be just as well.

Mrs. Richardson sighed and looked up from her letter.

“I suppose you wouldn’t care about paying Cousin Laura a visit?” she said.

Miriam looked undecided.

“What does she say?”

Mrs. Richardson told her.

“There’s a girl staying next door-she thinks you might be company for her. Oh, and Miss Danesworth has her nephew there too. I think you met him when you were there in the spring.”

“When does she want me to come?”

“Oh, yes-she says at once.”

Miriam’s heart gave a leap. Yes, she’d go. And she’d tell Jimmy where she was, and say she must see him. He’d come all right. She could deal with him there-or if she couldn’t… She said not too graciously,

“Well, I shouldn’t mind.”

Eleanor and Lilian, the other two girls, breathed again. They were seventeen and eighteen years of age, and they were definitely concerned with not going to stay with Cousin Laura. They avoided looking at each other until they were out of the room. They were a devoted pair, but they did not love their sister Miriam very much. It was unfortunate that at this juncture Jimmy Mottingley should have come to the same conclusion.

Mrs. Merridew heard from Mrs. Richardson on the Wednesday.

“My dear Laura,

It is indeed good of you to ask Miriam to pay you a visit. As it happens, she is at a loose end just now and very pleased to accept your kind offer. Her last employer was most unkind, and the child’s feelings were deeply hurt. I would really be glad of this change for her…”

There was a lot more, but Mrs. Merridew barely took the trouble to read it. Miriam was coming. That was really all she wanted to know. As for Grace’s supremely dull catalogue of events, they would keep. It would not be the first letter of hers which she had consigned to the waste-paper basket half read. She pursued Mrs. Richardson’s letter far enough to discover that she might expect Miriam on Friday, and abandoned the rest of it to go in next door and impart her news.

There was no sign of Richard or of Jenny. She had a good look round, but she could not see them anywhere. Miss Danesworth wondered why she had come, but she was not left to wonder for long. Mrs. Merridew, after her customary survey of anything and everything, pounced firmly on a handkerchief.

“That’s not yours!”

Miss Danesworth smiled.

“No, it’s Jenny’s-careless child.”

Mrs. Merridew sniffed.

“Is she still with you?”

“Oh, yes. I hope she will stay with me for some time.”

Mrs. Merridew resumed.

“I asked because I have a cousin’s daughter coming to stay. Such a nice girl.”

Miriam would have been astonished, and with reason. She had never had any occasion to observe that her cousin Laura thought her a nice girl.

Miss Danesworth said everything she could. She had met Miriam, and she did not like her very much. She was conscious of a certain pressure from Mrs. Merridew. She did not know of any particular reason for this pressure, but it made her uneasy. She thought she would not encourage too much intimacy. And she felt that in Mrs. Merridew she had an opponent.

Jenny and Richard were up on Hazeldon Heath. It was the sort of day that is not an everyday. There was a lark singing. It went up and up, and its song came floating down. The air was cool with the wind which always blows over the Heath, and it was warm in the sun. Richard looked at Jenny, and Jenny looked away to the May trees which stood in a thick clump over against them. She said,

“I wish I had seen them in flower. Are they all white?”

“There’s a pink one right in the middle.”

Jenny looked where he pointed.

“I didn’t know there were ever pink ones except in gardens.”

He laughed.

“I expect it escaped! Or perhaps someone planted it.”

“Things are interesting, aren’t they?” said Jenny with a sigh of contentment.

Richard looked at her. He went on looking until he thought he had better say something. What he said was not what he had meant to say. He said it because he couldn’t help himself.

“Do you know that when you look that way it makes me want to kiss you?”

Jenny gave a comfortable little laugh.

“You mustn’t say things like that, you know, or I shall have to go home.”

“Did you mind?”

“Oh, no. You didn’t mean anything.”

“Didn’t I?”

She was watching a little green and white spider that kept on climbing to the top of a stalk, and when it got there it seemed to have forgotten why it had come and it ran all the way down again. She said,

“Of course you didn’t. And I don’t want to go home a bit.”

“Then why go?”

“I won’t. Unless you go on talking nonsense.”

“Suppose it wasn’t nonsense-” he said.

“It couldn’t be anything else, could it? Not when we’ve only known each other for two or three days.”

He said slowly, “I suppose not.” Then with a sudden sense of having said something which he didn’t mean, which he never could mean, he broke in,

“Jenny-does time mean all that to you? It doesn’t to me.”

She gave him a hasty look over her shoulder. He was in earnest. A sense of standing on the brink of something she didn’t quite know what came upon her. She was afraid-not of him, or of herself. She didn’t know why she was afraid. She looked at him with startled eyes, and he saw that he had spoken too soon. She wasn’t ready.

“Jenny, don’t look like that. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Jenny sat up straight. She said in a voice which she tried to keep quite steady,

“It’s nothing.” She looked at her watch. “I-I think we ought to go home now-I really do.”

“No! I won’t do it again, I promise. Look, you can see the spire of Chiselton Church. There. No, a little more to the left-straight in line with the thorn trees. You can only see it when the weather is going to be very fine, and then only in the middle of the day.”