Instead of leaving her letter on the hall table Miss Silver might have gone down to the gate and posted it. Or, if she preferred the longer walk, she could have gone as far as Deep End and pushed Mrs. Charles Moray’s letter into the red slit which brightened the wall of old Mr. Masters’ cottage. Rain or shine, snow, hail or thunder, Mr. Masters would be out in his porch at ten o’clock to have a word with Mr. Hawke. During the war years, when it was Mrs. Hawke who had taken round the letters and cleared the boxes, he had felt bitterly deprived. Most days it would be no more than “Morning, postman” and a brief bulletin about his rheumatism, with perhaps a word or two in return about Mr. Hawke’s grandfather-in-law who was going to be a hundred on his next birthday, whereas Mr. Masters was only ninety-five, and no use trying to slip in an extra year or two, because everyone knew his age, and his daughter-in-law, still known as young Mrs. Masters though she was turned fifty, wouldn’t have it. She was a large and in the main silent person, but in matters like how old you were and how many times you’d got the prize for the best marrows over at Deeping she would speak up very awkward. Downright unfeeling, old Mr. Masters considered. For the rest, she was a hard-featured woman who kept him and the cottage like a new pin and found time and energy to put in three hours a day up at Deepe House, which neither she nor anyone else in either Deep End or Deeping could bring themselves to call Harmony.
As Mr. Masters put it:
“Might as well start giving me a new name at my time o’ life! And who’s Craddocks to go giving names and taking of them away-you tell me that! Ignorance and impertinence, that’s what I call it! Why, that there old house bin standing there since Queen Elizabeth’s time, and if you haven’t got a right to your own lawful name after all that time, when have you got a right to it-you tell me that!”
CHAPTER XII
Margaret Moray received Miss Silver’s letter at breakfast on the following day. It was a dark morning, and she took it to the window to get a better light. Then, still without opening it, she put it down before her husband. “What do you make of it, Charles?”
He gave it his frowning attention, asked to have the light switched on, and slanted the envelope towards it, flap uppermost.
“Well, I should say it had been opened.”
“So should I.”
She slit it carefully at the bottom end and read the innocuous missive aloud.
Charles Moray looked up from his porridge.
“What were you to do about it?”
“Let Frank Abbott have it, and send her a postcard to let her know whether we think it’s been tampered with. The postscript about the wool is the cue. If I was quite sure, I was to say, ‘How much of the wool do you want? I can get it all right.’ ” She hesitated a moment. “I don’t know that I can make it as definite as that.”
“Perhaps not.”
“Well, I thought I might say, ‘I think I can get the wool you want. Will find out for certain and let you know.’ I suppose they will be able to make sure at the Yard. Do you know, Charles, I do wish she hadn’t gone down there. I don’t like it a bit.”
Charles Moray didn’t like it either, but he wasn’t going to say so. Instead, he unfolded the rather lively newspaper with which he preferred to cheer his porridge and remarked in a carping tone that Beauty Queens got plainer every year.
Margaret came to look over his shoulder.
“Darling, what a frightful bathing-dress!”
“If you call it a dress! I shouldn’t! I wonder how much more she could leave off without getting arrested!”
She kissed the top of his head.
“I don’t know, darling-I’ve never thought it out. I do hope Michael isn’t being late for school. Betty will cut it too fine.”
Mrs. Moray’s postcard was duly delivered by Mr. Hawke next day. He was naturally aware that the new governess up at Deepe House was an indefatigable knitter, but he found himself unable to take a passionate interest in whether she could or could not get some particular kind of wool. And why write to London about it? Miss Weekes at the Fancy Stores in Dedham had a very good selection.
Meeting Miss Silver on his way up to the house, he imparted this information, adding,
“And Mrs. Hawke says it’s the best she’s seen for ever so long -quite pre-war, as you might say.”
He bicycled on to Deep End, pleased with his own kind thought and with Miss Silver’s pleasant response. And no harm in doing Miss Weekes a good turn neither, her sister Grace being married to a cousin of his own at Ledstow.
Miss Silver went rather thoughtfully back to the house with her postcard, which she made a point of showing to Mrs. Craddock.
“This special shade of pink is sometimes a little difficult, and it must be an exact match. Mrs. Moray was so kind as to say that she would do her best to get it for me.”
It was a little later that Jennifer came into the room. Since this was considered to be holiday time, Miss Silver had not attempted regular lessons, but was endeavouring to find things that would interest the children to hear about or to do. Maurice was working on a model engine, and what Maurice did Benjy of course must copy. In Jennifer she discovered a quick and sensitive response to poetry and drama. Some short one-act plays had been obtained, and all three children were rehearsing one of them. Already some pattern had been introduced into their days, and the first beginnings of order and punctuality instilled.
Jennifer came in now, said briefly, “Mrs. Masters wants to see you before she goes,” and then stood staring out of the window as Mrs. Craddock put down her mending and hurried out of the room.
Jennifer did not speak. She looked out at a graceful leafless tree, tracing its outline on the glass with the tip of her finger. Miss Silver, watching, was aware of the moment when she stopped thinking about the tree and the pattern which it made against the sky. Until that moment Jennifer’s thoughts had been lifted into an atmosphere of pure enjoyment-this lovely line and that, the way they crossed!, the way through all the crossing and turning that they sprang upward towards the light. And then all at once she didn’t see the tree or the sky any more. She saw her own hand spread out against the glass-a long, thin hand with the shape of the bones just showing through because a gleam of wintry sun was on the pane and its light made the flesh translucent.
It was when the sun came out that Jennifer stopped seeing the tree and began to stare at her hand. Looking on with interest and concern, Miss Silver was aware of a stiffening, a tension, an extraordinary concentration of the child’s whole being. She might have been looking at something repulsive, something horrible.
Miss Silver laid her knitting down upon her knee and said in her most matter-of-fact tone,
“Is there anything wrong with your hand, my dear?”
Jennifer whipped round, startled, angry.
“Why should there be?”
“I thought perhaps-you looked as if you were not very comfortable.”