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Updated: June 3, 2025
In the afternoon Auntie Hamps, Clara, Maggie, and Edwin were grouped around the bed of Darius. A fire burned in the grate; flowers were on the dressing-table. An extra table had been placed at the foot of the bed. The room was a sick-room. Dr Heve had called, and had said that the patient's desire not to be left alone was a symptom of gravity.
"Half and half?" "Yes," said Maggie. "They do say gooseberries were a tiny bit sour this year, owing to the weather," said Mrs Hamps reflectively. Clara kicked Edwin under the table, as it were viciously, but her delightful innocent smile, directed vaguely upon Mrs Hamps, did not relax. Such duplicity passed Edwin's comprehension; it seemed to him purposeless.
He resigned himself to the destruction of his dream. He was like a captive whose cell has been opened in mistake, and who is too gentle to rave when he sees it shut again. Only in secret he poured an indifferent, careless scorn upon Auntie Hamps. They played a whole interminable set, and then Edwin went home, possibly marvelling at the variety of experience that a single hour may contain.
And had she not the right to be? The bearded Edwin, one of the chief tradesmen in the town, and so fond of books, such a reader, and so quiet in his habits! And the two girls, with nice independent fortunes: Clara so fruitful and so winning, and Maggie so dependable, so kind! Auntie Hamps had scarce anything else to wish for. Her ideals were fulfilled.
"I shall give you a rap over the knuckles in a minute," smiled Mrs Hamps, who was now leaning an elbow on the table in easy intimacy. And she went on in a peculiar tone, low, mysterious, and yet full of vivacity: "I can't quite make out who that little nephew is that Janet Orgreave is taking about."
"You needn't talk like that," she retorted calmly, "unless you want to go down in my good opinion. You don't mean to tell me honestly that you don't know what's been the talk of the town for years and years!" "It's ridiculous," said Edwin. "Why what do you know of her you don't know the Orgreaves at all!" "I know that, anyway," said Auntie Hamps. "Oh! Stuff!" He grew impatient.
Then he said: "That's the most beautiful window in Bursley, and perhaps in the Five Towns; and you see what's happening to it." Edwin had never heard the word `beautiful' uttered in quite that tone, except by women, such as Auntie Hamps, about a baby or a valentine or a sermon.
Though he sat up to take his food, the tone of these apprehensive remonstrances implied that to sit up at any other time was to endanger his life. Darius, however, with a weak scowl, continued to lift himself, whereupon Maggie aided him, and Auntie Hamps like lightning put a shawl round his shoulders.
"There's no need to worry," he said as firmly as he could "The funeral got on his nerves, that's all. He certainly did seem a bit knocked about last night, and I shouldn't have been surprised if he'd stayed in bed to-day. But you see he's up and about." Both of them glanced at the window, which gave on the garden. "Yes," murmured Mrs Hamps, unconvinced. "But what about his crying?
Mrs Hamps nodded, satisfied, and the approving nod indicated that she was aware of all the excellences of the Hesketh family. "The tennis man!" Edwin murmured. "Yes, of course! You aren't surprised, are you?" The fact was that Edwin had not given a thought to the possible relations between Alicia and any particular young man.
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