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Age might be feeble, but it had, she considered, the consolation of knowing something of the limitations of its pain. She wished she could put an unscalable wall about the moor, so that the soundless feet should stay outside, for she did not know that already she had heard the footsteps of those whose actions were weaving her destiny. Helen Caniper might safely throw open all her doors.
Turning in the bed, she left him for the past of which Mildred Caniper had told her, yet that past, as parent of the present, looked anxiously and not without malice towards its grandchildren. What further tragedy would the present procreate?
"If stepmothers are not witches they ought to be dunces. Everybody knows that. I'll worry her till she sends us both to boarding-school." Mildred Caniper was not to be coerced. Her mouth grew more puckered, her eyes more serious, and her tongue sharper; for though anger, as she found, was useless, sarcasm was potent, and in time Miriam gave up the battle.
"You have been running," Mildred Caniper said. "No, not lately." "You are very pink." "Yes." Mildred Caniper's tone changed suddenly. "And I don't know where you have been. I wish you would not run off without warning. And I could not find Miriam anywhere." From anger she sank back to helplessness. "I don't know what to take," she said, and her hands jerked on her lap.
She turned to speak to them, but she had outgrown them in these days, and even Jane was puzzled by her grief that Mildred Caniper wanted to be kept warm, and, with some lingering faculty, wished Helen to be happy, but needed her no longer. Helen whispered into the dimness because her thoughts were unwholesome and must be cast forth. "She only wants to be kept warm!
"For fun, of course. Daniel and Zebedee and us." She leaned towards him. "And George, John, just to show that all's forgiven!" To see if she had dared too much, she cast a glance at Mildred Caniper, but that lady sat in the stillness of determined indifference. "Not one of you!" John said. "It's our wedding, and we're going to do what we like with it."
She forced her way out of this maze of thought and rushed out to see if George, by chance, were already on the moor, but he was not in sight, and she ran back again, through the kitchen, with a shirked glance for Mildred Caniper, and up the stairs to Miriam. "I can't go!" Miriam cried. "I'll go for John, but I daren't go to Halkett's." "John and Lily went with the milk this morning.
She had thought he would be on the watch for her, and she had hoped for him. Since they had to meet, let it be soon: let her heart learn to beat submissively again, and the mouth kissed by Zebedee to take kisses from another. But he did not come, and later, when she had helped Mildred Caniper to bed, Helen sat on the moor to waylay and welcome him, and make amends for her unfaithfulness.
John doesn't know about things. Let's pack." And while Mildred Caniper lay on one side of the landing where the Pinderwells were playing quietly, Helen and Miriam, on the other, laughed at the prospect before them and made foolish jokes as they filled the trunk.
Helen asked. She wanted a touch at which she need not shudder, and surely it was fitting that some one should kiss her on her wedding-day. Soon after nine o'clock, Helen bade Mildred Caniper and the nurse good-night and went downstairs with Jim close at her heels. "We're going to sit in the kitchen, James. I'll get my sewing."
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