"It's high time," Aunt Bella said, "that she should learn to like them. The Draper girls are too old. But there's that little Bertha Mitchison." "I haven't called on Mrs. Mitchison for two years." "And why haven't you, Caroline?" "Because I can't afford to be always hiring wagonettes to go to Woodford Bridge." "Cuckoo!" "Caroline--do you think she could have heard?" "Cuckoo, Aunt Bella! Cuckoo!" IV. On the high road the white dust had a clear, sharp, exciting smell. At the wet edges of the ford it thickened. When you shut your eyes you could still see Bertha's scarlet frock on the white bridge path and smell the wet earth at the edges of the ford. You were leaning over the white painted railing of the bridge when she began. The water flowed from under the little tunnel across the road into the field beyond. Deep brown under the tunnel, tawny in the shallow ford, golden patches where the pebbles showed through, and the water itself, a sheet of thin crystal, running over the colours, sliding through them, running and sliding on and on. There was nothing in the world so beautiful as water, unless it was light. But water was another sort of light. Bertha pushed her soft sallow face into yours. Her big black eyes bulged out under her square fringe. Her wide red mouth curled and glistened. There were yellowish stains about the roots of her black hair. Her mouth and eyes teased you, mocked you, wouldn't let you alone. Bertha began: "I know something you don't know." You listened. You couldn't help listening. You simply had to know. It was no use to say you didn't believe a word of it. Inside you, secretly, you knew it was true. You were frightened. You trembled and went hot and cold by turns, and somehow that was how you knew it was true; almost as if you had known all the time. "Oh, shut up! I don't _want_ to hear about it." "Oh, don't you? You did a minute ago." "Of course I did, when I didn't know. Who wouldn't? I don't want to know any more." "I like that. After I've told you everything. What's the good of putting your fingers in your ears _now_?" There was that day; and there was the next day when she was sick of Bertha. On the third day Bertha went back to Woodford Bridge. V. It was dreadful and at the same time funny when you thought of Mr. Batty and Mr. Propart with their little round hats and their black coats and their stiff, dignified faces. And there was Uncle Edward and his whiskers. It couldn't be true. Yet all true things came like that, with a queer feeling, as if you remembered them. Jenny's wedding dress. It would be true even of Jenny. Mamma had said she would rather see her in her coffin than married to Mr. Spall. That was why. But--if it was true of everybody it would be true of Mamma and Papa. That was what you hated knowing. If only you had gone on looking at the water instead of listening to Bertha--