Jimmy coming out at that moment flung himself joyfully into the breach,
but he had a suspicion that the child regarded him coldly as he walked
away with Miss Jackman. He must really explain to Moira afterwards that
there were things in life she could not possibly hope yet to
understand--affairs of the heart, vague but beautiful. Meanwhile, Honora
Jackman, inwardly fuming, was smiling upon him and extracting
information. Jimmy, with his cap upon the back of his head and his hands
in his pockets, supplied answers cheerfully.
So it came about that Honora learnt more than she had learnt already
from the Baffalls; understood how this large-hearted man had stood in
his loneliness, as it were, with wide-opened arms ready to welcome these
children who drifted in from the world he had gladly left behind;
understood, with no real sense of the beauty and generosity of it, how
all and sundry who came had been welcomed, for the simple and perfect
reason that they were children. That point never appealed to the woman;
she saw only a foolish man, easily imposed upon by a tale of distress.
"So that I suppose you all have different names?" she suggested. "I
mean, of course, names other than Jimmy--and Moira--and the other
child."
"My name is James Larrance," said Jimmy, "and Alice's mother (she went
away and quite forgot to come back, you know) was Mrs. Vickery. Only
Moira has got the real name," he added.
"The real name?" She turned and looked at him sharply. "What's the real
name?"
"Nannock," replied Jimmy. "That's Old Paul's name, you know; and he gave
it to Moira because I believe he couldn't bear that other one--the name
that really belonged to her. He got Moira from someone he was awfully
fond of."
Honora began to see daylight; began to sniff suspiciously at a possible
but impossible love story--an awkward jumbled thing, buried away in the
years that Old Paul was trying to forget. She became interested in spite
of herself, but she saw that she must use this boy to further her ends.
She dropped that light hand again upon his shoulder as they walked, and
spoke confidentially, playing upon his heartstrings as upon a new and
untried instrument, easily stirred.
"Jimmy, I'm quite sure that you and I are going to be great friends,"
she said. "Of course, you understand, Jimmy, that I have very few
friends--not people that I really like--people I can talk to."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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