Читать книгу Eliza for Common - Anna Masterton Buchan - Страница 7

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“The trivial round, the common task,

Should furnish all we ought to ask.”

J. Keble.

The pleasant memory of her first dinner-party had to last Eliza for some time, for after Jim had departed for Oxford the Laidlaws settled down to the daily round unenlivened by much social life.

January and February are not as a rule pleasant months in Glasgow; the rain is ever faithful, the streets are greasy with mud, damp umbrellas and mackintoshes scent the air. The shops, too, have a woe-begone look, and the garments marked down to “Sale prices” would seem from their dejected appearance to feel their position keenly. True, it is not entirely dreary. To the seeing eye there is a sort of reticent beauty in the black and white of the dull January weather, and February brings moist rushing winds from which leap “splendid regatta days where the white sails endlessly over the blue.” And the flower-sellers at the street-corners do their best to supply sunshine, with their baskets heaped with mimosa and yellow tulips and daffodils, while in most houses bulbs are being eagerly watched.

At this time Eliza’s life was largely lived in books. Every minute that she could get out of sight of her active little mother (who thought that only the ill and the aged should read through the day) was spent poring over some volume, generally Shakespeare. Jim had given her at Christmas The Oxford Book of English Verse, and she delighted to carry it about and browse in it.

Her mother grew quite alarmed to hear her one day, as she sewed loops on some new kitchen towels, murmur to herself—

“When in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes....”

and broke in with—

“I looked into your room just now, Eliza, and was shocked to see how untidy it was. If you don’t take yourself in hand you will grow into one of those thowless women who are such a disgrace to their sex. Run up now and put your room right and try to get your mind off poetry. It’s all very well in its way, but I fear it will prove a snare to you. Try to be practical. Now, Eliza, don’t drop your eyes in that superior way. Some day, when I’m gone, you will be thankful for your mother’s training. I know I bless my dear mother every day of my life for what she taught me.”

And Eliza went to tidy her room, musing grimly on the great gulf that seemed to be fixed between life in books and life as it was lived at Blinkbonny.

One day, a particularly dreary day in the end of January, with a sky that seemed to rest on the house-tops and a moisture-laden atmosphere that was both muggy and cold, she felt that life was ugly indeed. Her mother had decided that they would begin to turn out all the drawers and cupboards and wardrobes in preparation for the spring-cleaning—and Eliza hated above everything to turn out drawers! It seemed to her such a futile business to empty the contents of a drawer on the floor, dust it thoroughly, fit in a clean paper and put everything back; but she did it; it was not worth making a fuss about; besides, somebody had to do it.

She believed that her mother really enjoyed the process, and time was when Mrs. Laidlaw had begun preparations for the spring-cleaning with a light heart, when she had donned a large pinafore and started with the greatest gusto to open boxes and re-arrange everything, sometimes sitting on the floor for hours lost to the world, as she read old letters and turned over tenderly her own wedding veil and slippers and the robe in which all the children had been christened. But that was when the circle had been unbroken. Now there was one box that she opened with a heavy heart. Very gently were the things lifted out, kissed and cried over and wrapt again in soft white paper. Strange things to be so tenderly treated—a boy’s half-worn boots, rather kicked at the toes, some dog-eared lesson-books scribbled over with funny faces, a knife with a broken blade, a watch that had been so maltreated that it had given up the unequal contest and settled into eternal silence. These things had belonged to Tom, Tom who had died three years before, when his years on earth numbered only eleven, and had left the world a much emptier place to his parents.

On this dull January day Eliza conscientiously tidied her drawers—folding her ribbons, laying the handkerchiefs in neat piles, weeding out things here and there for the next Jumble Sale, and having finished, changed her dress and went down to early dinner. The two boys did not come home till tea-time, so dinner was a peaceful meal.

Mrs. Laidlaw took her place with a sigh, and when her daughter said, “Well, Mother, enjoyed your morning?” she felt that vague antagonism which even the most loving mother sometimes feels for a daughter, and thought how easily managed boys were in comparison.

“You talk, Eliza, as if it were a special pleasure to me to turn everything up. It’s sad work to me now turning out cupboards.” And Eliza, remembering the pitiful little box of memories, felt compunction for her careless speech. But she would not show it, and her mother went on:

“Are you remembering that we’re going to tea at Mrs. Stit’s? You haven’t made yourself very smart. I never did like that dress.”

“Mrs. Stit’s!” cried Eliza. “I’d forgotten. This is going to be a beastly day.”

Her father, who was supping soup in a contemplative manner, raised his eyebrows.

“Things going badly?” he asked.

“Oh, nothing special. Merely spring-cleaning looming, and I’ve to go down to the district to look after two girls who haven’t been attending my class; on the top of that, tea at Mrs. Stit’s, and then one of those old evangelistic meetings at night.”

Mrs. Laidlaw sighed deeply as she looked across at her husband.

“How,” she asked, “can we expect a blessing on our meetings when the minister’s daughter talks like that? Oh, Eliza, is that all evangelistic meetings mean to you?”

Eliza merely looked stubborn, but her father said:

“Let the child alone, Ailie.... I sometimes think ministers’ children get a poor chance.”

Eliza turned eagerly. “Oh, Father, they do. It’s all so much just the business of our lives—religion, I mean. We hear so much about working up this and that, and unless you’re heart and soul in it——”

“And what’s to hinder you being heart and soul in it?” Mrs. Laidlaw demanded.

Eliza shrugged her shoulders and was silent.

Mrs. Laidlaw took a spoonful of soup, laid down her spoon and went on, “I was reading the other day, in the British Weekly, I think, that the particular devil that attacks the young is secularism. Your head, my dear, is too full of poetry and plays to have room for the things that really matter.... When I was your age I went as happily to an evangelistic meeting as to a party.” Then she looked at her husband and admitted, “Of course I knew I would see you there.”

“It’s funny to think of father as a young man holding meetings. Imagine Jimmie! What made you want to be a minister, Daddy?”

Mr. Laidlaw did not seem to be at all offended at the question. “Because,” he said mildly, “I wanted to be about my Father’s business. Have you any objection?”

Mrs. Laidlaw answered for her daughter. “Of course she hasn’t, and I do wish, Walter, you wouldn’t encourage her when she’s pert.” And Eliza, who had been made rather ashamed by the look in her father’s eyes, now hardened her young mouth into an obstinate line and lounged ostentatiously in her chair to show how little she cared what anyone thought of her.

An hour later she was walking down a street near the Clyde searching for the number she wanted. When she found it she hesitated in the close before mounting the stairs, not knowing whether the Mrs. Henry she was looking for might not live on the ground floor. It was almost quite dark and she peered at a door to see if there was a nameplate on it, but there was none, so she knocked. When the door was opened an inch or two she spoke into the gloom.

“Does Mrs. Henry live here?”

“Ay”, said a voice.

“Could I see her?”

“Come in if ye like,” and Eliza stumbled over the threshold into a living-room of sorts.

It was a little lighter than the close, but it could never be really light in winter, for the one small window looked on to a narrow court and a high wall. The room seemed to be kitchen, bedroom, and washhouse in one; a fire choked with ashes burned in the grate, a teapot with a broken spout stewing beside it. In the window was the sink (known as the “jawbox”), filled to the brim with dirty dishes; a tub stood on a chair in the middle of the floor with half-washed clothes standing in water; garments were hung behind the door and on the bed-posts. The remains of a meal stood on a table—a lump of butter on a messy plate, the heel of a loaf, a bit of hard cheese. In a corner a lean cat was worrying something, but Eliza dared not look, in case it was a rat.

Mrs. Henry was a large woman with a big face the colour of oatmeal. Her entirely unfettered figure seemed to be held together only by an apron. She lurched a little as she walked and her eyes had a glassy stare.

“I’m in a gey steer,” she told her visitor. “I startit to wash yesterday, but wi’ one thing and another I couldna get feenished, and I was seeck a’ nicht. Ay, three times I was up at the jawbox, an’ I’m no free o’ it yet. I hed to tak a drop o’ speerits to help me to keep up, for I couldna luk at ma denner.—Ucha, I think it was a bit o’ potted heid we hed for oor supper, but I dinna ken: mebbe no, but onyway, I didna feel like washin’ the day.”

She wiped her nose with the back of her hand and gave a laugh which shook her fat body like a jelly.

Eliza hastily averted her eyes and said, “I’m sorry you don’t feel well. I really came to ask for your daughter Maggie. She has missed two Sundays at the class, and I wondered if she were well.”

“Aw, Maggie——” Mrs. Henry got hold of a broom and clung to it for support. “She’s a’ richt. If she wisna at the class she’d be trailin’ the streets wi’ her boy.” She leered at her visitor. “Weel, ye canna blame her, ye’ll likely hev a boy o’ yer ain? I was aye a great yin for the boys masel. Ay, I’ve buried twa husbands, an’ I’ll mebbe see anither oot, wha kens. Maggie’s the first yin’s. Beenie there,” she jerked her thumb towards the bed, “is a’ that’s left o’ ma second family. I hed twins, bit they died—mebbe juist as weel.”

Eliza, peering into the obscurity of the bed, saw that among the filthy blankets a child lay. There was no slip on the pillow, and the dirty ticking supported a head of tangled dark hair, and two great dark eyes watched the stranger. Eliza was reminded of some wild thing in a trap.

“Is she ill?” she asked.

Mrs. Henry, still clinging to her broom, cast a careless eye towards the bed. “Uch ay, something aboot the spine. She was drappit when she was a wee wean. She’s no to get owre’t the doctor says. It’s a gey job for me, I can tell ye. The lassie should be workin’, rinnin’ wi’ milk or papers, an’ here I’ve got her to nurse.”

Eliza went and stood beside the bed, looking down pitifully at the small, pinched, hostile face.

“Why do you say she can’t be cured?” she said, turning quickly to the mother. “Doctors can do such wonderful things now. If she were taken to the Children’s Hospital....”

But at that Mrs. Henry began to weep maudlin tears.

“Ma wean gang to a hospital! Whit a notion! Hev I no been a guid mammy to ye, Beenie, ma wee hen? Me buyin’ milk for her and lossin’ ma sleep, an’ rinnin’ aboot doctors! Ay, an’ whit business is it o’ yours, I’d like to ken, ye great lang interferin’—— Oot o’ this—oot o’ this, I tell ye....” She lurched forward, and Eliza, after a glance at the unblinking dark eyes in the bed, made for the door, followed by horrible words from the half-tipsy woman.

She stood in the close-mouth for a minute, glad to feel the cold air on her face, so shaken by the encounter with her pupil’s mother that she half thought of going straight home; but reflecting that that would be a feeble course to follow, she started off down the long street to look up the other absentee pupil—Jessie Calder.

This time, though the mouth of the close was almost as dark and noisome as the last, things improved as she mounted, and she was relieved to find that the door marked Calder had a bright bell.

Mrs. Calder opened the door, a little thin woman with patient eyes. “Jessie? Oh ay, it’s ma granddochter ye want. Ay, she’s been lyin’ this last fortnicht, but she’s some better. Come in. Ye’re Miss Laidlaw? I see ye at the kirk, an’ Jessie cracks a lot aboot ye.”

They went through a small lobby into a kitchen which was bright even on this dark afternoon with well-polished brass and a shining grate.

A woman was leaving the kitchen as they entered, and was introduced as “the lady next door—Mistress MacQueen!”

“I’ll just be going, Mrs. Calder,” she said, “an’ I’m real glad ye’ve seen the doctor an’ that he’s given ye satisfaction.—Good-bye the noo.”

Jessie was working a sewing-machine in a corner by the fire, and rose to greet her teacher with a shy, pleased smile.

“And you’ve been seeing the doctor too, Mrs. Calder?” Eliza said, after she had heard all details of her scholar’s illness.

Mrs. Calder folded her hands over her clean white apron.

“I hev that,” she said importantly. “I hevna been the thing for a lang time, and ma ain doctor juist aye gied me a bottle and said I’d be ‘all right in a little.’ So Mistress MacQueen brocht her doctor, a skilly doctor he is, and he tell’t me that ma kidneys are wrong, and ma hert’s weak, and ma blood-pressure is—I dinna mind what.”

Eliza stared. So this was the “satisfaction” alluded to by Mrs. MacQueen! It hardly seemed the proper word, but Mrs. Calder seemed in no way cast down by the report.

“I hope the new doctor will make you quite well,” she remarked.

“That’s mair than I could expect, but I’d like to keep on for a wee while for Jessie’s sake.... She’ll be back at the class gin Sabbath.”

“I didn’t like missing it,” said Jessie.

Eliza felt surprised and quite absurdly pleased. She had thought her scholars came only from a sense of duty.

“Na,” said Mrs. Calder, “she was in a way aboot it. Ye’re young to be a teacher, but that’s mebbe why they like ye—youth draws to youth. Grand meetin’s we’re hevin’ the noo. I’m a wee thing deaf and the speaker hes a fine loud voice, but I’m no sure but that I dinna like oor ain quiet prayer-meetin’ on the Wednesday nicht best, wi’ Mr. Laidlaw speakin’ that friendly-like aboot the auld prophets and the apostles that ye fair feel they were folk like oorsels....”

Eliza arrived at Mrs. Stit’s house at four-thirty, and was shown into the drawing-room.

Mrs. Stit was a young-looking woman with fluffy fair hair turning grey, and vague, light eyes. She always wore loose garments, frilly about the neck, and had a trick of putting her hand to her mouth after she had made a remark, as if startled at her own temerity. She had a family of three daughters, who had all married young, and all married ministers. Mrs. Stit was often heard to say that her cup was full.

Eliza found her mother there before her, and, with her, her friend Mrs. Learmond. Mrs. Stit had felt it her duty to ask this lady to tea, though she had not cared for her when she met her at Blinkbonny. She feared she lacked charity, and doubted if she were a real Christian.

It amused Eliza to see Mrs. Learmond in the Stits’ drawing-room. She was reminded of Geordie’s remark when first he had met that lady. “I like her,” he had said, and added, “she wouldn’t be unkind to eagles,” but would give no explanation of his cryptic remark. To-day, Eliza thought, she looked rather like an eagle—an eagle somewhat dazed by the clucking of farm-yard fowls. She was a handsome woman, tall and fresh-coloured, with a pair of adventurous blue eyes that had looked at the world with interest and amusement for nearly eighty years. She had accepted this invitation for civility’s sake, but she privately regarded Mrs. Stit as a very foolish woman, and inwardly marvelled why it was Mrs. Laidlaw liked her.

Mrs. Learmond was merely a sojourner in Glasgow. She belonged to the Straths of Angus, where, the last of the family, she occupied the old house which had come down to her through many generations. In the black years of the War she had found things too difficult, and having been advised by her doctor to winter in Glasgow, took a furnished house in Pollok Road. While there she met Mrs. Laidlaw, and was made free of Blinkbonny, and, to her own immense surprise, after three years was still in Glasgow.

Mr. Stit was standing on the hearth-rug with his back to rather a cheerless fire. He was a fat man, growing bald, with a thick neck, and a large round head, which he rolled. He was a man who ‘never wanted for the asking,’ and had had a perfect genius for persuading all the most prominent preachers and teachers to come and speak in his church. At the moment he was telling Mrs. Laidlaw about the phenomenal size of his Bible-class and the number of his young communicants. His hands held his sides—he had a way of clutching at his body and squirming—and his head rolled back as he boomed out his tale. Mrs. Laidlaw listened with a dejected air, for Mr. Stit had a way of implying that, in comparison with his church, Martyrs’ was but a poor thing, which made her feel both angry and helpless, and she was glad when Mrs. Stit herded them to the dining-room for tea.

The sight of the tea-table cheered her, for she told herself that it was not the sort of tea she gave her friends: nothing home-made—even the jam she suspected of coming from a shop; stale cake, and shortbread soft and rounded at the corners; no cream.

Eliza sat beside Mrs. Learmond, who was bewailing the loss of her most treasured spectacles.

“To lose my specs,” she said in her definite, grave tones, “is a great loss to me. I have others, of course, but these were my favourite tortoise-shell ones that I always read with in the evening.” She turned to Eliza. “I was brought up, my dear, never to read in the daytime, and I still stick to the habit. Knit, work, write letters, walk, talk—anything you like all day, and in the evening you really enjoy your books and papers. I feel guilty even now if I find myself reading in the morning.”

“And where did you lose your spectacles?” Mrs. Stit asked.

“If I knew that,” said Mrs. Learmond, “I’d go and get them.—No! I’m afraid I must have dropped them in a car, or something silly like that, and I’ll never see them again.”

Mrs. Stit leaned forward. Her greying fair hair hung rather wispily over her forehead, her light eyes gazed at the guest.

“Have you prayed about it, Mrs. Learmond?” she asked, and put her hand to her mouth.

Mrs. Learmond looked at her for a second or two before she replied. “Mrs. Stit, I have wrestled on my knees with my Maker many times about things that mattered, but....”

“Oh, but,” Mrs. Stit’s hand was at her mouth again, “the Lord loves us to take the little trials to Him, all our losses and disappointments. I had such a lovely little text this morning.—It was ... what was it, Father?”

“I don’t remember, Lena.”

“Oh yes—Cast thy burden upon the Lord. And it was so needed, the dear familiar text, for Janet was really insolent last night when I spoke to her about coming in so late, and I got up feeling burdened, but I got strength to go downstairs as blithe as a bird and to greet Janet as I always greet her, just like a friend. I said, ‘A new day, Janet, for us to fill full to the brim with usefulness, a new leaf all unsullied.’”

“And what did Janet say?” asked Mrs. Laidlaw, deeply interested.

“Oh,” said Mrs. Stit lightly, “Janet has no outcome, if you know what I mean. I believe she feels much without being able to give expression to her feelings.... But I do want to hear about your meetings, Mrs. Laidlaw. Are you having good results?”

Mr. Stit addressed Eliza, asking her if she had been reading anything lately, and Eliza, thinking of the books that seemed to make the background of her life a rich tapestry, said, “Nothing special.”

“I am thinking,” Mr. Stit went on, “of taking one or two popular novels and lecturing on them on the Sunday evenings,—best sellers, as they call them. One can sometimes find a deep inner meaning in those works of fiction, and anyway, they are what the public wants, so therefore of a certain importance.”

“Oh, quite,” said Eliza politely.

When they were leaving, Mrs. Stit grew arch.

“To think,” she said, “that I should have lost all my girlies! Ah, Mrs. Laidlaw, you must keep your girlie as long as you can. I just wish I had a son to make a nice husband for Eliza.”

The face that young woman turned on her hostess was not a pleasing one, and Mrs. Laidlaw hastily withdrew.

As they reached the gate Mrs. Learmond said heavily:

“I believe it would take very little to make that woman’s reason topple. Oh, I know that’s not a pretty thing to say when I have accepted her hospitality, but I don’t like her. I shall ask her to luncheon next week since she was so civil as to invite me to her house, but I think the acquaintance will go no further. Time is too precious to me now to waste on irrelevant people.”

“I like Mrs. Stit,” Mrs. Laidlaw said. “I know she’s silly, but I think she’s good, and anyway I’ve a weakness for her. Poor soul!”

Mrs. Learmond and Eliza looked at each other and smiled.

Eliza finished her day at the evangelistic meeting in Martyrs’. There was a good attendance and she noticed that her class was well represented. Maggie Henry was there, singing lustily, She only touched the hem of His garment. Maggie liked going to meetings and singing Sankey’s hymns, and had several times professed conversion. Eliza, looking at her with new eyes, thought with a shudder that Maggie was like her mother. She had the same oatmeal sort of skin and loose open mouth; she was beginning, too, to get fat. When Eliza shook hands with her at the close, the girl jerked back her head at the preacher, saying, “My! he was grand. I go’ a second baptism the night.”

“I didn’t know you had a sister so ill,” Eliza said.

“Beenie! Uch ay, she’s aye been like that.”

“But couldn’t something be done? Couldn’t you persuade your mother to let her go away where she would get a better chance?”

Maggie looked away, saying, “Uch, I don’t know,” and Eliza, thinking to herself that she ought to be specially kind to a girl with such a home, turned to speak to a little apple-cheeked creature in brown for whom she had rather a weakness.

“How are you all?” she asked, and received in reply a history of colds and toothache and other ills.

“I’m so sorry—but you look well yourself.”

“Oh—me!” the girl smiled cheerily. “I get off awfu’ safe.”

Eliza smiled in sympathy as she saw her join a waiting young man and march off with him happily, then, turning, found her father at her side.

“Are you going home with your mother in the tram, or walking?”

“It’s a good night. I’d rather stride home with you, Daddy.”

“All right. Come along and we’ll go to bed with some fresh air in our lungs.”

They walked through quiet back streets, glad of the silence and the darkness. Suddenly Eliza said—

“I simply don’t know, Father, how you stick it.”

Mr. Laidlaw, whose thoughts had been far away from the toiling city, turned to his daughter with mild astonishment.

“Stick what?” he asked.

Eliza threw out her hands. “Everything—trailing up and down dirty stairs, visiting people in kitchens,—you who love beauty. These meetings—all the cant phrases they use. One of my class girls was there to-night: she told me she had got a second baptism! This afternoon I was at her house, such a house as I never imagined existed. Her mother seemed hardly human, a great gross creature, half clothed and rather drunk. In the bed there was a sick child so utterly neglected that she seemed like some little wild animal. I don’t know how old she is, she never spoke, but her mother said before her, calmly, almost with satisfaction, that she wasn’t going to get better. I don’t believe they want her to get better. Can nothing be done?”

They were passing a lamp-post and Mr. Laidlaw stopped and took out a small notebook. “What’s the address? Henry, 68 Paisley Street—something will certainly be done. Yes! there are some very bad places in Glasgow.”

“And yet,” Eliza went on, “I went next to a house in quite as bad a locality—the close was awful as I went in—and it was a sort of paradise in comparison, clean and bright—a place you could eat and sleep in. Mrs. Calder, Jessie’s grandmother, seemed such a decent little wisp of a woman, so small and thin, as if she had worked herself away to a thread, but quite undefeated.”

“Mrs. Calder! Oh, she’s a great friend of mine, she comes from Gala Water. Yes, it’s not much good talking about better houses for the poor, until you can manage to put some self-respect into the people themselves. If you put your friend Mrs. Henry into one of those clean new houses she’d probably have it a pig-sty in a week. On the other hand, a decent, God-fearing woman can, in the worst slum, make her house shine like a good deed in a naughty world. You must work from the heart out.... Did you not enjoy the meeting to-night?”

“No,” said Eliza, “I didn’t. Mother would say I didn’t go in the proper spirit.... But I was trying to forget the smell of Mrs. Henry’s kitchen. I’m sick of everything. Life in Glasgow is about as ugly and drab as—as that gasometer.”

Walter Laidlaw laughed. “Poor little ‘Liza. You would like to remake the world and fill it with people with Oxford accents, well versed in belles-lettres. A genteel world, my daughter!”

Eliza pinched her father’s arm in protest, but he went on. “And a pretty ghastly one! I can’t imagine anything duller, for no one would be more than half alive.”

“Father..... They couldn’t be worse, anyway, than Mrs. Stit and a lot of the people we know. Talk about dullness! The only person I’ve seen to-day with a ray of light about her is that nice little Phemie Brown who told me just now at the hall door that she ‘got off awfu’ safe,’ and walked away with such a satisfied smile, ‘cleeking’ with her young man.”

Walter Laidlaw laughed. “My dear, if you knew it, you are very fortunate to be placed as you are. You’ve the chance of knowing intimately all sorts and conditions of people. Don’t be too hard on your mother’s friends and mine. Remember that if age seems to you tiresome and narrow and didactic, youth seems to age ignorant and complacent and, sometimes, cruel. And don’t be wilfully blind. Life in Glasgow is drab, you say, but beauty isn’t far to seek. Don’t you remember what Bunyan said? ‘A stately palace the name of which was Beautiful and it stood just by the highway-side.’ Well, and what is Jim’s new story like? I haven’t had time to look at it yet.”

Late that evening Mr. and Mrs. Laidlaw sat by the fire having their half-hour of peace at the end of the long day.

“I didn’t enjoy going to Mrs. Stit’s this afternoon,” Mrs. Laidlaw was saying. “Mrs. Learmond doesn’t like her, and Eliza was positively rude, but I must say Mrs. Stit is a sickness with her ‘girlies.’ I’m glad we have no assistant for Eliza to marry—I can’t think why all the Stit girls wanted to marry their father’s assistants, but their mother is more than pleased.”

“Madame Light Mind,” said her husband.

“Oh no, Walter, she’s a spiritually minded woman if she is silly.”

Mr. Laidlaw began to roll up his watch.

“‘I met a fool,’” he quoted meditatively.

His wife was putting the room ready for Mary in the morning.

“What did you say, Walter?”

“A fool i’ the forest.”

“Eliza’s discontented,” said Mrs. Laidlaw, folding back the rug; “girls often are when they first grow up. I’m ashamed that I find it so hard to be patient with her.” She sighed. “Children are a great responsibility. I’ve often heavy thoughts about Jim at Oxford with that craze of his for the theatre—and Geordie’s broken the garden-gate again.”