"You're a funny little thing, aren't you?" she said.
Anne's eyes were glassed. She shook her head fiercely and spilled tears.
Jerrold had come up on to the terrace. Colin trotted after him. They
were looking at her. Eliot had raised his head from his book and was
looking at her.
"It _is_ rotten of you, mater," he said, "to tease that kid."
"I'm not teasing her. Really, Eliot, you do say things--as if nobody but
yourself had any sense. You can run away now, Anne darling."
Anne stood staring, with wild animal eyes that saw no place to run to.
It was Jerrold who saved her.
"I say, would you like to see my new buck rabbit?"
"Rather!"
He held out his hand and she ran on with him, along the terrace, down
the steps at the corner and up the drive to the stable yard where the
rabbits were. Colin followed headlong.
And as she went Anne heard Eliot saying, "I've sense enough to remember
that her mother's dead."
In his worst tempers there was always some fierce pity.
iii Mrs. Fielding gathered herself together and rose, with dignity, still
smiling. It was a smile of great sweetness, infinitely remote from all
discussion.
"It's much too hot here," she said. "You might move the cushions down
there under the beech-tree."
That, Eliot put it to himself, was just her way of getting out of it. To
Eliot the irritating thing about his mother was her dexterity in getting
out. She never lost her temper, and never replied to any serious
criticism; she simply changed the subject, leaving you with your
disapproval on your hands.
In this Eliot's young subtlety misled him. Adeline Fielding's mind was
not the clever, calculating thing that, at fifteen, he thought it. Her
one simple idea was to be happy and, as a means to that end, to have
people happy about her. His father, or Anne's father, could have told
him that all her ideas were simple as feelings and impromptu. Impulse
moved her, one moment, to seize on the faithful, defiant little heart of
Anne, the next, to get up out of the sun. Anne's tears spoiled her
bright world; but not for long. Coolness was now the important thing,
not Anne and not Anne's mother. As for Eliot's disapproval, she was no
longer aware of it.
"Oh, to be cool, to be cool again! Thank you, my son."
Eliot had moved all the cushions down under the tree, scowling as he did
it, for he knew that when his mother was really cool he would have to
get up and move them back again.