Antique dealers -- Fiction; English fiction -- 20th century
Posy burst into tears; the girl’s eyes were dry. Then Posy stammered
out: "Did you love her very much?" and the other laughed, actually
laughed, as she replied: "Love her? She was all I had in the world!"
This glimpse of a grief beyond tears was a unique experience, something
which transcended imagination, and something, therefore, not fully
absorbed. For many nights Posy was haunted by the vision of that white,
drawn face, with its hungry, despairing expression; then it slowly faded
away. By this time, also, she had almost forgotten the Honeybun stories
of the submerged tenth. Bexhill breezes had blown them out of her mind.
Somewhere in festering slums and alleys, men and women and children were
fighting desperately against disease, poverty, and vice. Teachers had
pointed out, with kindly common sense, that it would be morbid and
futile to allow the mind to dwell upon conditions which, for the moment,
a schoolgirl was powerless to ameliorate. With relief, Posy had purged
her thoughts of such horrors.
And now her father raised the question—What was to be done with this
fancy piece?
Posy answered that question after her own fashion. The Chrysostom
aforesaid—excellent, practical parson!—had indicated a task. Under his
teaching and preaching Posy had returned gladly enough to the fold of
the Church of England. She no longer thought of Omnipotence as a vague
essence permeating the universe. The Deity had become personal.
Chrysostom, however, was too sensible a man to fill the minds of
schoolgirls with doctrinal problems. He preached practical Christianity
with sincerity and eloquence. The nail he hammered home into youthful
pates was this: "Make the world a pleasanter place for others, and you
will find it more pleasant for yourselves." The girls at Posy’s school
indulged in mild chaff over this dictum. Sweet seventeen admonished
blushing sixteen to "Be a sunbeam!" Another catchword in frequent use
was: "Save a smile for mother!"
Fired by the conviction that the sunbeam business paid handsome
dividends, Posy returned to Soho Square. She intended to brighten the
lives of everybody in the house, including the tweenie. That, for the
moment, was to be her "job." She described the process as "binging ’em
up."
And the member of her father’s household who seemed to be most in need
of "binging" happened to be James Miggott.
*II*
In August—she had left school for good at the end of the summer
term—Posy and her mother went to Weymouth. Quinney did not accompany
them. He said, jocularly, that he got all the change he needed
travelling about the kingdom in search of "stuff." Business being at a
low ebb in August, he selected that month for a general stocktaking,
balancing of accounts, and the planning of an active autumn campaign.
Mabel Dredge remained with him, a most capable assistant; James Miggott
was told that he might spend three weeks wherever he pleased.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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