Madge was a puzzle to Mrs Caffyn. Mrs Caffyn loved her, and when she
was ill had behaved like a mother to her. The newly-born child, a
healthy girl, was treated by Mrs Caffyn as if it were her own
granddaughter, and many little luxuries were bought which never
appeared in Mrs Marshall's weekly bill. Naturally, Mrs Caffyn's
affection moved a response from Madge, and Mrs Caffyn by degrees
heard the greater part of her history; but why she had separated
herself from her lover without any apparent reason remained a
mystery, and all the greater was the mystery because Mrs Caffyn
believed that there were no other facts to be known than those she
knew. She longed to bring about a reconciliation. It was dreadful
to her that Madge should be condemned to poverty, and that her infant
should be fatherless, although there was a gentleman waiting to take
them both and make them happy.
'The hair won't be dark like yours, my love,' she said one afternoon,
soon after Madge had come downstairs and was lying on the sofa. 'The
hair do darken a lot, but hers will never be black. It's my opinion
as it'll be fair.'
Madge did not speak, and Mrs Caffyn, who was sitting at the head of
the couch, put her work and her spectacles on the table. It was
growing dusk; she took Madge's hand, which hung down by her side, and
gently lifted it up. Such a delicate hand, Mrs Caffyn thought. She
was proud that she had for a friend the owner of such a hand, who
behaved to her as an equal. It was delightful to be kissed--no mere
formal salutations--by a lady fit to go into the finest drawing-room
in London, but it was a greater delight that Madge's talk suited her
better than any she had heard at Great Oakhurst. It was natural she
should rejoice when she discovered, unconsciously that she had a
soul, to which the speech of the stars, though somewhat strange, was
not an utterly foreign tongue.
She retained her hold on Madge's hand.
'May be,' she continued, 'it'll be like its father's. In our family
all the gals take after the father, and all the boys after the
mother. I suppose as HE has lightish hair?' Still Madge said nothing.
'It isn't easy to believe as the father of that blessed dear could
have been a bad lot. I'm sure he isn't, and yet there's that
Polesden gal at the farm, she as went wrong with Jim, a great ugly
brute, and she herself warnt up to much, well, as I say, her child
was the delicatest little angel as I ever saw. It's my belief as
God-a-mighty mixes Hisself up in it more nor we think. But there WAS
nothing amiss with him, was there, my sweet?'