Hamlet was worrying Mary's pincushion at the moment, holding it between
his paws, his body stretched out in quivering excitement, his short,
“snappy” tail, as Uncle Samuel called it, standing up straight in air.
He stopped for an instant when he heard his name, and shook one ear.
“Mother says,” continued Helen, “that she lived with a brother who never
gave her enough to eat.”
Jeremy opened his eyes. This seemed to him a horrible thing.
“She shall have my porridge, if she likes,” he said; “I don't like it
very much. And I'll give her that chocolate that Mr. Jellybrand sent us.
There's still some, although it's rather damp now, I expect.”
“How silly you are!” said Helen scornfully. “Of course, Mother will give
her anything she wants.”
“It isn't silly,” said Jeremy. “Perhaps she'll want more than she really
wants. I often do.”
“Oh, you!” said Helen.
“And if for ever so long,” said Jeremy, “she hasn't had enough to eat,
she'll want twice as big meals now as other people--to make up.”
“Mother says we've got to remember she's a lady,” said Helen.
“What's the difference,” asked Jeremy, “between a lady and not a lady?”
“Oh, you are!” said Helen. “Why, Aunt Amy's a lady, and Rose isn't.”
“Rose is nicer,” said Jeremy.
Miss Jones had, I am sorry to say, lied to Mrs. Cole in one particular.
She had told her that “she had had to do with children all her life,”
the fact being that on several occasions some little cousins had come to
stay with herself and her brother. On these occasions the little
cousins had been so paralysed with terror that discipline had not been
difficult. It was from these experiences that Miss Jones flattered
herself that “she understood children.”
So audacious a self-confidence is doomed to invite the scornful
punishment of the gods.
Miss Jones arrived upon a wet January afternoon, one of those Glebeshire
days when the town sinks into a bath of mud and mist and all the pipes
run water and the eaves drip and horses splash and only ducks are happy.
Out of a blurred lamp-lit dusk stumbled Miss Jones's cab, and out of a
blurred unlit cab stumbled Miss Jones.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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