ins and spangles
as the girls came trooping down the stone stairs into the wings to wait
there for the curtain's rise. Then she perceived in the dim light Old
Man Veal diligently cleaning his master's gun. Wishing he would not sit
there underneath her window, she turned back into the tall, shadowy room
and lit the candle. Soon she heard his retreating footsteps, and watched
him go down the garden path with the slim and wicked gun beneath his
arm. Young Frank, rose-misted with dreams of butterflies and painted
rubber balls, lay in his hooded cot. Shading him with her hand, which
the candlelight made lucent as a shell, she watched him lying there, his
fingers clasped tightly round a coral hung with silver bells, his woolly
lamb beside his cheek. Jenny wondered, if she had been a boy, whether
she would have looked exactly like young Frank. Then she fell to
speculating whether, had he belonged to her and Maurice, he would have
been the same dear rogue as now. Oh, he was hers, hers only, and
whatever man were his father, he would be nothing more than hers!

She went to see how May was getting on, and in company they undressed,
as they used to undress before Jenny went on the stage. Soon both of
them in long white nightgowns, each with a golden candle, pattered in
once more to marvel at young Frank.

"Oh, I must have him in bed with me, May."

"Well, why don't you?"

Carefully they lifted him, and, warm with sun-dyed sleep, laid him in
Jenny's cool bed.

"Light the nightlight, there's a love," said Jenny. "Good night."

"Good night," whispered May, fading like a ghost through the black
doorway, leaving the tall room to Jenny and Frank. Tree shadows,
conjured by the moon, waved on the walls, but very faintly, for the
nightlight burned with steady flame in the opalescent saucer. Jenny
settled herself to think what she should say to Maurice next morning.
But soon she forgot all about Maurice, and "I'd rather like to have a
little girl," was her last thought before she went dreaming.

Chapter XLVIII: _Carni Vale_

Jenny woke up the next morning in a gray land of mist. A sea-fog had
come in to obliterate Trewinnard and even the sparkling month of June,
creating a new and impalpable world, a strange undated season. Above the
elm trees and the hill-tops the fog floated and swayed in vaporous
eddies. Jenny's first impulse was to postpone the meeting on the cliffs,
and yet the day somehow suited the enterprise. Shroud