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He smiled a little to himself; he could picture Killigrew, leaning attentive, turning the pages, smiling between narrowed lids at the lovely thing she looked chin raised and full throat vibrant yet giving so little away beyond his admiration. The song faded, silence fell, then a door opened and closed. Vassie's voice was raised, this time in welcome.
Killigrew was just drawing upon the tablecloth, unreproved of Annie, a sketch of a fashionable Parisian lady for Vassie's instruction when the door opened to admit of Tom, a very rare visitor at Cloom nowadays. He was in sleek black broadcloth and looked almost as ecclesiastical as Tonkin, and much more so than Boase.
If he could show off Cloom without a qualm, however, it was not the same when it came to displaying his family, and never had he been so thankful for Vassie's beauty as when he saw Killigrew's notice of it. And how that beauty glowed for Killigrew! Even a brother's eyes could not but admire. Phoebe sat unnoticed, her charm swamped in that effulgence.
Three walls were still lined with dusty golden-brown books that he had been wont to describe as smelling of bad milk pudding, and the shabby green tablecloth was littered with sermon paper and more books just as it had been for his lessons. He almost expected to see Vassie's golden head, no more alien from him than his own boyish dark one, bending over it as he looked.
Her mouse-brown hair, straight and soft and fine, refused to fall into the heavy polished curtains that were the mode, and which made of Vassie's two waves of rich brass, bright and hard-edged as metal. Phoebe's eyes were brown, not of the opaque variety, but with the actually velvet look of a bee's body. The girls at school had told her her eyes looked good to stroke.
"Why, I don't know ... it all depends," answered Blanche, her beautiful low voice sounding very rich after Vassie's hard tones. "You've never been to London, have you, Vassie? I may call you Vassie, mayn't I?" "I've never been further than Plymouth." "You must come to London some day with me," said Blanche.
If the Parson had not possessed a natural genius for teaching, even his patience would never have survived those schoolroom struggles with three children of differing ages and capacities. But he was interested in Vassie's determination to improve herself, and of little Phoebe he was fond in the way one cannot help being fond of some soft confiding little animal that rubs up against one.
I like getting away from it all and working in the dairy and looking after the tiny calves. I like that best of all, that and my baby chickens. But Vassie's only happy when she's dressed up and paying visits." "I like your way best," he assured her, thinking what a jolly little thing she was after all.
Ishmael's heart sank with a terrible weight upon it as he thought that these were the people with whom his lot was cast that he must see them, talk to them, day in, day out, all the round of the seasons.... Vassie's beauty seemed dimmed to him; Phoebe became an annoyance like a musical-box that will not leave off tinkling out the same tune.
The drive was a silent one, as even Vassie felt shy, though she hid it under an affectation of calmness. Ishmael had plenty of time to readjust himself and think of his mother, the determining factor, now Archelaus was away, in his happiness or so he thought, ignorant in his masculinity of the force and will sheathed in Vassie's velvet sleekness.
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