To-night she heard voices at the door and somebody else's feet going
tip-toe behind Aunt Adeline's. Somebody else whispered "She's asleep."
That was Jerrold. Jerrold. She felt him standing beside his mother,
looking at her, and her eyelids fluttered; but she lay still.
"She isn't asleep at all," said Aunt Adeline. "She's shamming, the
little monkey."
Jerrold thought he knew why. He turned into the old nursery that was the
schoolroom now, and found Eliot there, examining a fly's leg under his
microscope. It was Eliot that he wanted..
"I say, you know, Mum's making a jolly mistake about that kid. Trying to
go on as if she was Anne's mother. You can see it makes her sick. It
would me, if my mother was dead."
Eliot looked as if he wasn't listening, absorbed in his fly's leg.
"Somebody's got to tell her."
"Are you going to," said Eliot, "or shall I?"
"Neither. I shall get Dad to. He'll do it best."
vii Robert Fielding didn't do it all at once. He put it off till Adeline
gave him his chance. He found her alone in the library and she had begun
it.
"Robert, I don't know what to do about that child."
"Which child?"
"Anne. She's been here five weeks, and I've done everything I know, and
she hasn't shown me a scrap of affection. It's pretty hard if I'm to
house and feed the little thing and look after her like a mother and get
nothing. Nothing but half a cold little face to kiss night and morning.
It isn't good enough."
"For Anne?"
"For me, my dear. Trying to be a mother to somebody else's child who
doesn't love you, and isn't going to love you."
"Don't try then."
"Don't try?"
"Don't try and be a mother to her. That's what Anne doesn't like."
They had got as far as that when John Severn stood in the doorway. He
was retreating before their appearance of communion when she called him
back.
"Don't go, John. We want you. Here's Robert telling me not to be a
mother to Anne."
"And here's Adeline worrying because she thinks Anne isn't going to love
her."
Severn sat down, considering it.
"It takes time," he said.
She looked at him, smiling under lowered brows.
"Time to love me?"
"Time for Anne to love you. She--she's so desperately faithful."