hat; I will. I believe I can tell the very
moment I began to love him. It was in the schoolroom the second evening.
Sheila and I were sitting there just before dinner, and he came, in a
rage, looking splendid. 'That footman put out everything just as if I
were a baby--asked me for suspenders to fasten on my socks; hung the
things on a chair in order, as if I couldn't find out for myself what to
put on first; turned the tongues of my shoes out!--curled them over!'
Then Derek looked at me and said: 'Do they do that for you?--And poor old
Gaunt, who's sixty-six and lame, has three shillings a week to buy him
everything. Just think of that! If we had the pluck of flies--' And he
clenched his fists. But Sheila got up, looked hard at me, and said:
'That'll do, Derek.' Then he put his hand on my arm and said: 'It's only
Cousin Nedda!' I began to love him then; and I believe he saw it,
because I couldn't take my eyes away. But it was when Sheila sang 'The
Red Sarafan,' after dinner, that I knew for certain. 'The Red
Sarafan'--it's a wonderful song, all space and yearning, and yet such
calm--it's the song of the soul; and he was looking at me while she sang.
How can he love me? I am nothing--no good for anything! Alan calls him
a 'run-up kid, all legs and wings.' Sometimes I hate Alan; he's
conventional and stodgy--the funny thing is that he admires Sheila.
She'll wake him up; she'll stick pins into him. No, I don't want Alan
hurt--I want every one in the world to be happy, happy--as I am. . . .
The next day was the thunder-storm. I never saw lightning so near--and
didn't care a bit. If he were struck I knew I should be; that made it
all right. When you love, you don't care, if only the something must
happen to you both. When it was over, and we came out from behind the
stack and walked home through the fields, all the beasts looked at us as
if we were new and had never been seen before; and the air was ever so
sweet, and that long, red line of cloud low down in the purple, and the
elm-trees so heavy and almost black. He put his arm round me, and I let
him. . . . It seems an age to wait till they come to stay with us next
week. If only Mother likes them, and I can go and stay at Joyfields.
Will she like them? It's all so different to what it would be if they
were ordinary. But if he were ordinary I shouldn't love him; it's
because there's nobody like him. That isn't a loverish fancy--you only
have to look a