"Oh, mother!" spluttered Roger, coming up to the surface of his emotion.
"I'm a rich man now! I've got Jesus, and you, and Poppy! Mother, this is
Poppy, and I'm going to marry her as soon as I can."

The woman in uniform looked at the window when Marion turned to her, as
if she would have liked to jump through it. One could imagine her
alighting quite softly on the earth as if on pads, changing into some
small animal with a shrew's stringy snout, and running home on short
hindlegs into a drain. She moistened her lips and mumbled roughly and
abjectly: "I didn't want to come."

Marion answered smoothly: "But now that you are here, how glad I am
that you have," and took her two hands and patted them. Looking round
benevolently at Ellen and back at Lieutenant Poppy, she exclaimed: "I'm
a lucky woman to have two daughters given me in one week." She was
behaving like an old mother in an advertisement, like the silver-haired
old lady who leads the home circle in its orgy of eating Mackintosh's
toffee or who reads the _Weekly Telegraph_ in plaques at
railway-stations. The rapidity with which she had changed from the
brooding thing she generally was, with her heavy eyes and her twitching
hands perpetually testifying that the chords of her life had not been
resolved and she was on edge to hear their final music, and the
perfection with which she had assumed this bland and glossy personality
at a moment's notice, struck Ellen with wonder and admiration. She liked
the way this family turned and doubled under the attack of fate. She was
glad that she was going to become one of them, just as a boy might feel
proud on joining a pirate crew. She went over and stood beside Richard
and slipped her arm through his. Uneasily she was aware that now she,
too, was enjoying the situation, and would not have had it other than it
was. She drooped her head against Richard's shoulder, and hoped all
might be well with all of them.

"You see, mother, since I saw you I've had trouble--I've had trouble--"
Roger was stammering.

Marion turned from him to Richard. "Ring for tea," she said, "and turn
on the lights. All the lights. Even the lights we don't generally use."

Roger clung to her. "I don't want to hide anything from you, mother," he
began, but she cut him short. "Oh, what cold hands! Oh, what cold
hands!" she cried playfully, and rubbed them for him. As the lights went
up one by one, behind the cornice, in the candlesticks on the table, in