My story isn』t b you, is it, Miss Lea?「 I endured a number of suents the following day as, uo suppress my yawns, I fidgeted and rubbed my eyes while listening to Miss Winter』s narration.
『I』m sorry. I』m just tired.「
『Tired!「 she exclaimed. 」You look like death warmed up! A proper meal would put yht. Whatever』s the matter with you?「
I shrugged my shoulders. 「Just tired. That』s all.」
She pursed her lips and regarded me sternly, but I said nothing more, and she took up her story.
For six months things went on. We sequestered ourselves in a handful of rooms: the kit, where John still slept at night, the drawing room and the library. We girls used the back stairs to get from the kit to the one bedroom that seemed secure. The mattresses we slept ohose we had dragged from the old room, the beds themselves being too heavy to move. The house had felt too big anyway, sihe household had been so diminished in number. We survivors felt more at ease in the security, the manageability of our smaller aodation. All the same, we could never quite fet the rest of the house, slowly festering behind closed doors, like a moribund limb.
Emmeline spent much of her time iing card games. 「Play with me. Oh, go on, do play,」 she would pester. Eventually I gave in and played. Obscure games with ever-shifting rules, games only she uood, and which she always won, which gave her stant delight. She took baths. She never lost her love of soap and hot water, spent hours luxuriating ier I』d heated for the laundry and washing up. I didn』t begrudge her. It was better if at least one of us could be happy.
Before we closed up the rooms, Emmeline had gohrough cupboards belonging to Isabelle and taken dresses and st bottles and shoes, which she hoarded in our campsite of a bedroom. It was like trying to sleep in a dressing-up box. Emmeline wore the dresses. Some were out of date by ten years, others—belonging to Isabelle』s mother, I presume—were thirty and forty years old. Emmeliertained us in the evenings by making dramatitrances into the kit in the more extravagant outfits. The dresses made her look older than fifteen; they made her look womanly. I remembered Hester』s versation with the doctor in the garden—There is no reason why Emmeline should not marry one day—and I remembered what the Missus had told me about Isabelle and the piics—She was the kind of girl men 』t look at without wanting to toud I felt a sudden ay. But then she flopped down on a kit chair, took a pack of cards from a silk purse and said, all child, 「Play cards with me, go on.」 I was half reassured, but still, I made sure she did not leave the house in her finery.
John was listless. He did rouse himself to do the unthinkable, though: He got a boy to help in the garden. 「It』ll be all right,」 he said. 「It』s only old Proctor』s boy, Ambrose. He』s a quiet lad. It won』t be for long. Only till I get the house fixed up.」
That, I knew, would take forever.
The boy came. He was taller than John and broader across the shoulders. They stood hands in pockets, the two of them, and discussed the day』s work, and then the boy started. He had a measured, patient way of digging; the smooth, stant chime of spade on soil got on my nerves. 「Why do we have to have him?」 I wao know. 「He』s an outsider just like the others.」
But for some reason, the boy wasn』t an outsider to John. Perhaps because he came from John』s world, the world of men, the world I didn』t know.