The door opened and there came into the room Meg, full of purpose.

Mac was rather pleased to see her. He didn’t really want to discuss Jenny with his mother, nor did he wish to talk about the girl whom he had killed. He felt a strong cold resentment against her for having deceived him. For she had deceived him, and she had done it knowingly. He had spoken Jenny’s name before he struck, and it was because she had accepted his “Jenny-” that she was dead. He felt no remorse at all. She had asked for what she had got. She had pretended to be Jenny. Let her take the consequences.

He turned from the fire at the sound of the opening door and said, “Hullo, Meg!”

Meg was very pleased to see him. If he was in a good mood he could help her very much. Joyce was a fraidy cat. If she pulled it off she would crow over her. She ran up to Mac and took his hand. She must get in quick before Mother sent her away.

“Oh, Mac,” she said, “I’m so glad you’ve come! Mother, if Mac says we can have the kitten, we can, can’t we?”

Mac put out a hand to her.

“What’s all this about a kitten?”

“It’s Nurse’s. Her cat had three kittens. They’re the dearest little things, and she’s saved the best one for us. Mother said she’d think about it. Oh, we do want it so much!”

Mac laughed. He had Meg’s hands and was swinging her to and fro. Mrs. Forbes, watching them, thought how handsome he was, and how much like her family. The height, the fairness, they were all from her side. She forgot to be angry with Meg for bursting in. Her heart swelled with pride and devotion.

“Well, what about it? Are you going to have it-or not? What about it, Mother?”

Meg pulled her hands away from his and clasped them under her chin. She didn’t speak. Some instinct told her not to. If Mac asked for the kitten she would get it, but if she asked herself- A creeping fear came over her. If she stayed quite, quite still and left Mac to talk, perhaps Mother would let her have the kitten. Perhaps-oh, perhaps-

“Well, what about it?” said Mac.

Mrs. Forbes gave the laugh which she kept for him.

“Oh, well-” she said. “But I won’t have it till it is housetrained. Well, Meg, you may thank your brother Mac for that. Now go along back to the schoolroom. And I don’t want to see you again.”

Meg controlled her feelings. She had won! How she would crow over Joyce! But for now she must remember her manners. She said, “Thank you, Mac-thank you, Mother,” and gave an exhibition performance of a grateful child leaving the parental presence.

But the moment she was outside and the door safely shut the decorum vanished. She gave a little skipping dance of satisfaction, and then away up the stairs with her. Bursting breathlessly into the schoolroom where Joyce was sitting rather gloomily dressing her old doll Madeline in the new clothes which Jenny had made for her, she danced right round the table, snatching at Madeline and making her dance too.

“I’ve got him, I’ve got him!” she chanted. “He’s my own furry purry one. He’s not yours at all. Because you were a fraidy cat. You wouldn’t go down and ask for him. But I did-I did. And who do you think was there?”

“I don’t know,” said Joyce. “I wish you would give Madeline back, Meg. She doesn’t like being jumped about like that.”

“She does! You do, don’t you, Madeline? There-she said ‘Yes!’ I heard her! And she and Patrick will be great friends. I’m going to call him Patrick.”

“You said you were all along. Madeline’s tired. I wish you’d let her rest.”

“All right, here you are. She’s rather a stupid really. What has she got to be tired about?”

“She doesn’t know,” said Joyce in a mournful voice. “There doesn’t have to be a reason for being tired. I’m tired often-I’m tired now.”

Meg stopped dancing round the table.

“Oh, Joicey,” she said, “are you really? You’re not ill-tired, are you?”

Two big tears rolled down Joyce’s cheeks.

“I d-don’t th-think so,” she said.

Meg went down on her knees beside the chair and hugged her.

“Oh, Joicey, don’t be ill again! I don’t want you to be ill. Patrick shall be yours and mine. Perhaps he’ll be a little bit more mine than yours, because I did get him for us. Oh, Joyce, don’t cry! And we’ll think of all the things we can do with him. Shall we?”

Downstairs in the sitting-room Mrs. Forbes was saying,

“Have you seen Alan at all this week?”

“Alan? No, I haven’t. He was staying with those friends of his, wasn’t he?”

She said, “Yes.” She was frowning. “He’s gone off with the son. It’s all very sudden, and I don’t know what to think of it.”

“How do you mean, he’s gone off?”

“I mean just that.” She went over to the writing-table and stood there turning over the papers on it. “No, I can’t find his letter. I must have torn it up. Yes, I remember I did. I was so provoked. But now I’ve had time to think about it I’m not at all sure it isn’t the best thing.” She came back to the fire. “Mac, did you ever think Alan was in love with that girl?”

He laughed with genuine amusement.

“With Jenny? My dear Mother! Of course he was! Everyone in the house knew about it!”

“Not Jenny!” Her voice had a startled sound.

“I should think Jenny most of all. You needn’t worry-she turned him down, you know.”

“Are you sure? How do you know?”

He laughed again.

“I have my methods. Well, I mean it was fairly obvious. You must have been very taken up not to be on to it yourself.”

His words struck home. She frowned. It was true-when he was there she had no eyes or thoughts for anyone else. For a moment she had a clear-cut vision of herself concentrated on the one image. She was not a stupid woman. She knew what she was doing. She knew very well that of the four children of her body only the eldest, only Mac, was the child of her heart. Alan, Meg and Joyce were physical accidents. In Alan’s case, he had been so linked with Mac that the realization of this fact had been, as it were, veiled. Mac and Alan were linked. For Meg and Joyce she felt only a decent family feeling. She would bring them up, and she would marry them off, and that would be the end of it. Meg was going to be pretty. Joyce… Too early to tell.

She came back to Alan. Just as well for him to be out of the way for a bit if he really had this stupid feeling for Jenny. She supposed she should have thought of the possibility before. She said so.

“I suppose I ought to have thought of it, but I didn’t. I oughtn’t to have had her here.”

Mac laughed.

“Oh, there’s no harm done. If he wasn’t in love with her, it would have been someone else. Where’s he going?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t really say-I don’t think he cared. I think the other boy wanted to go to Italy. He said they’d write when they’d settled on a plan.”

Chapter XXIX

Kathy Lingbourne had made up her mind. She was twenty-two, and she had taken her mother’s place at seventeen. Her father was a hardworking solicitor with very little time to spare for his children. In the five years that had passed since Kathy had become mistress of the house all her endeavours had been to supply her dead mother’s place, and to keep her father from being worried. She wasn’t the eldest of the family. That was Len. Then came Kathy, and David, and Heather. They were all close together. Heather, the youngest, was just eighteen. Jimmy Mottingley had been Len’s friend to start with, and she had taken to him at once because he was shy and had very nice manners-much nicer than Len’s. That was the worst of not being the eldest at home. She could manage David and Heather, but when Len wanted to take his own way he took it, and if she said anything he would laugh and say he was two years older than she was, and what about it? Jimmy Mottingley wasn’t like that. He was gentle and rather shy, and he was frightfully afraid of his father and of his mother. Of course they were grim-Kathy admitted that. But he was their only child, and you ought not to be afraid. In a muddled sort of way she thought that to be afraid like that was wrong, and she dimly saw that the more afraid you were, the more harm it did, not only to you, but to the people you were afraid of.