"And a wild rose _here_," she added, pointing to the place on her
dress, though nobody felt interested enough to look. Her remark about
the Collection was more vital than the other. Collections in church
were made, they believed, to "feed the clergyman." And Sunday was the
clergyman's day.
"I've got sixpence," Tim hastened to remind everybody. "I've got a
threepenny bit as well."
"It's sixpence to-day, I think," Judy decided almost tenderly. Behind
her thought was a caring, generous impulse; the motherly instinct sent
her mind to the collection for the clergyman's comfort. But romance
stirred too; she wanted to look her best. Her two main tendencies
seemed very much alive this Sunday morning. The hat and the
sixpence--both were real.
Maria, as usual, had little or nothing to say. She spoke once, however.
"I dreamed," she informed the company. She did not look up, keeping her
head bent over the bread and marmalade upon her plate; her blue eyes
rolled round the table once, then dropped again. No one asked for
details of her dream, she had no desire to supply them. She announced
her position comfortably, as it were, set herself right with life, and
quietly went on with the business of the moment, which was bread and
marmalade.
Uncle Felix looked up, however, as she said it.
"That reminds me," he observed, "I dreamed too. I dreamed that you
dreamed."
"Yes," Maria replied briefly, moving her eyes in his direction, but not
her head. No other remarks were made; the statement was too muddled to
stimulate interest particularly.
When breakfast was over they went to the open window and threw crumbs
to a robin that was obviously expecting to be fed. They all leaned out
with their heads in the sunlight, watching it. It hopped from a twig on
to the ground, its body already tight to bursting. It looked like a toy
balloon--as though it wore a dress of red elastic stretched to such a
point that the merest pinprick must explode it with a sharp report; and
it hopped as though springs were in its feet. The earth, like a taut
sheet, made it bounce. Tim aimed missiles of bread rolled into pellets
at its head, but never hit it.
"It's a lovely morning," remarked Uncle Felix, looking across the
garden to the yellow fields beyond. "A perfect day. We'll walk to
church." He brushed the breakfast crumbs from the waistcoat of his neat
blue suit, lit his pipe, sniffed the air contentedly, and had an air
generally of a sailor on shore-leave.
Judy sprang up. "There's button-holes to get," she mentioned, and flew
out of the room like a flash of sunlight or a bird.
Tim raced after her. "Wallflower for me!" he cried, while Judy's answer
floated back from halfway down the passage: "I'll have a wild
rosebud--it'll match my hat!"
Uncle Felix and Maria were left alone, gazing out of the window side by
side upon the "lovely morning." She was just high enough to see above
the edge, and her two hands lay sprawled, fingers extended, upon the
shining sill.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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