Laura, on her side, had no hesitations whatever. Driven by the needs of her nature, shy Laura, timid, tentative Laura, could, like any starved sparrow, be insistent upon Mrs. Cloud’s threshold, cheeping hopefully till she was accorded entry-right, her crumbs, and a corner in the warm. Once in, once accepted, she was quiet. Too quiet ... thought Mrs. Cloud, yet a good little soul.... She was dazed, I dare say, in those first months, by her better fortune: was still eyeing life with meek vigilance, as a dog eyes you when you have stumbled on its paw. Also, though she clung to Justin’s mother, she had no special spontaneous affection for Mrs. Cloud, as Mrs. Cloud who was ready enough to pet her, soon realized. Grateful she was, but elusive too, cold, evading kisses, unresponsive when you took her on your knee, limply angular against a motherly breast. It was not Mrs. Cloud who had picked her up out of a haystack—out of a hell.... But, received discreetly as one representing a federate state, allowed to hunch by the hour (but on an individual footstool) at Mrs. Cloud’s feet, hugging her own knees, elaborating her own views of life and enquiring with luring, alluring interest into those of her hostess, Laura could be singularly companionable in an elderly and impersonal fashion that made Justin laugh and chaff them both when he caught them at their gossiping, but which had the undoubted effect of making Mrs. Cloud confidential. ‘Confidential’ is a strange word to link with Mrs. Cloud, who did not, originally because she would not (but ‘would’ had long ago hardened into ‘could’) expand or respond to any one save Justin: and how often, how intimately even to him, had she spoken of what lay closest to her heart? closer, more desperately dear than Justin, even than Justin; for women will always wonder how far the God-appointed seed consoles for Abel dead and Cain a fugitive. What should Justin know, beyond their names, of the two little girls who died, and of the first-born, John, the legendary brother, so like and so unlike himself, John Cloud the ne’er-do-weel, swallowed up years since by the continent that gives new lamps for old? But watch Mrs. Cloud’s face (or, if you love her a little, do not watch) when Brackenhurst stirs its tea, and doubles up its thin bread-and-butter, and talks, with its air of bewildered but unshakable patronage, of America. The grocer, bankrupt since Brackenhurst’s invasion by the smart, blue-painted Co-operative Stores (margarine given in with every pound of butter) poor Pringleson the grocer is doing very well out there. Has built a house and sent home for Mrs. Pringleson.