Not that she really felt like laughing in the least, for every minute that passed left her more troubled and ill at ease. There was something so calculated about the whole conversation, the setting forth of the relics, the deliberate exclusion of herself. Emma’s methods made her feel self-conscious and yet stultified at the same time, leaving her as they did no loophole for self-defence. From Emma’s egotistical speech you would never have guessed that Mrs. Clapham had anything to do with either Stephen or Stephen’s children; not even, indeed, with Stephen’s widow. In the case of the children the exclusion was made even more pointed by the continual dwelling upon that unhappy likeness. It was perfectly true that in those sad little photographs which Emma handled so gloatingly there wasn’t a trace of Tibbie or Tibbie’s mother. All the love or the hatred in the world couldn’t deny the stock from which they sprang. Undoubtedly they were Emma’s grandchildren more than they were Mrs. Clapham’s, and as the latter looked at them she was seized by doubt and almost dislike. The spasm passed in a moment, however, leaving her penitent and ashamed. She remembered their plaintive but sweet voices, their shy but endearing ways; tricks of speech which, young as they were, already showed their minds as far removed from Emma’s as the Poles. It came to her, too, that it was a terrible thing to carry a likeness to somebody you hated and feared, so that, no matter what you did, or how far you happened to go, that somebody was always waiting for you whenever you looked in a glass.... “Ay, children make a deal o’ difference in a house,” Emma reverted to the original discussion. “Stephen’s wife won’t have that much time for anything else. Not that she’ll mind the trouble, likely, any more than me. I was always one for liking a child about the place.” Mrs. Clapham’s flesh positively crept at the audacious, smooth-spoken words. The colour sprang to her bent face. Once again she seemed to see the pale-faced boy on the stair, and repelled the vision with actual fright. More and more she was beginning to wonder what was the purpose behind all this.... But at last Emma’s wholesale commandeering of everything that she loved had aroused her to open resentment. “Ay, and me an’ all!” she broke out sharply, yet remembering even in her vexation to handle tenderly the relics of the War. “There’s nowt like coming home to a child’s funny little ways. What, there’s times even yet I can’t hardly believe I shan’t find Tibbie on t’ other side when I push the door! Folks never forget as has once had a child about the spot, and the older they grow the more like they are to think there was nowt to match it.”