one's encumbered way in the gloom--unless one liked to go miles
round a back street, to the yard entry. There was James Houghton,
faintly powdered with coal-dust, flitting back and forth in a fever
of nervous frenzy, to Throttle-Ha'penny--so carried away that he
never saw his daughter at all the first time he came in, after her
return. And when she reminded him of her presence, with her--"Hello,
father!"--he merely glancied hurriedly at her, as if vexed with her
interruption, and said:
"Well, Alvina, you're back. You're back to find us busy." And he
went off into his ecstasy again.
Mrs. Houghton was now very weak, and so nervous in her weakness that
she could not bear the slightest sound. Her greatest horror was lest
her husband should come into the room. On his entry she became blue
at the lips immediately, so he had to hurry out again. At last he
stayed away, only hurriedly asking, each time he came into the
house, "How is Mrs. Houghton? Ha!" Then off into uninterrupted
Throttle-Ha'penny ecstasy once more.
When Alvina went up to her mother's room, on her return, all the
poor invalid could do was to tremble into tears, and cry faintly:
"Child, you look dreadful. It isn't you."
This from the pathetic little figure in the bed had struck Alvina
like a blow.
"Why not, mother?" she asked.
But for her mother she had to remove her nurse's uniform. And at the
same time, she had to constitute herself nurse. Miss Frost, and a
woman who came in, and the servant had been nursing the invalid
between them. Miss Frost was worn and rather heavy: her old buoyancy
and brightness was gone. She had become irritable also. She was very
glad that Alvina had returned to take this responsibility of nursing
off her shoulders. For her wonderful energy had ebbed and oozed
away.
Alvina said nothing, but settled down to her task. She was quiet and
technical with her mother. The two loved one another, with a curious
impersonal love which had not a single word to exchange: an almost
after-death love. In these days Mrs. Houghton never talked--unless
to fret a little. So Alvina sat for many hours in the lofty, sombre
bedroom, looking out silently on the street, or hurriedly rising to
attend the sick woman. For continually came the fretful murmur:
"Vina!"
To sit still--who knows the long discipline of it, nowadays, as our
mothers and grandmothers knew. To sit still, for days, months, and
years--perforce to sit still, with some dignity of tranquil bearing.
Alvina was old-fashioned. She had the old, womanly faculty for
sitting quiet and collected--not indeed for a life-time, but for
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