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Updated: June 12, 2025
"Well," she answered, gripped tight in self-conscious shame, "I'm sure I looked at them five minutes since." "Yes," said the mother, "I know it's easily done." "They're not much burned," said Paul. "It doesn't matter, does it?" Mrs. Leivers looked at the youth with her brown, hurt eyes. "It wouldn't matter but for the boys," she said to him.
Leivers shouted in a kindly fashion at the boy, then clicked to the horse as they climbed the hill slowly, in the freshness of the morning. White clouds went on their way, crowding to the back of the hills that were rousing in the springtime. The water of Nethermere lay below, very blue against the seared meadows and the thorn-trees. It was four and a half miles' drive.
But she walked in her proud humility, living within herself. There was always this feeling of jangle and discord in the Leivers family. Although the boys resented so bitterly this eternal appeal to their deeper feelings of resignation and proud humility, yet it had its effect on them.
"I said I'd be early." He was very awkward. "But this IS early," said Mrs. Leivers. Miriam sat in the rocking-chair, and did not speak. He hesitated, expecting her to rise and go with him to the barn as usual for his bicycle. She remained as she was. He was at a loss. "Well good-night, all!" he faltered. She spoke her good-night along with all the others.
And directly the two women moved on. Paul remembered that Clara Dawes was the daughter of an old friend of Mrs. Leivers. Miriam had sought her out because she had once been Spiral overseer at Jordan's, and because her husband, Baxter Dawes, was smith for the factory, making the irons for cripple instruments, and so on.
Leivers was a good-looking man in the prime of life, with a golden-brown moustache, and blue eyes screwed up against the weather. The boys were condescending, but Paul scarcely observed it. They went round for eggs, scrambling into all sorts of places. As they were feeding the fowls Miriam came out. The boys took no notice of her. One hen, with her yellow chickens, was in a coop.
When she was in the room, the kitchen seemed too small and mean altogether. Miriam's beautiful twilighty parlour looked stiff and stupid. All the Leivers were eclipsed like candles. They found her rather hard to put up with. Yet she was perfectly amiable, but indifferent, and rather hard. Paul did not come till afternoon. He was early.
"And you've been going with Miriam Leivers?" the mother asked him. "Well " he answered. "Yes, she's a nice girl," she continued. "She's very nice, but she's a bit too much above this world to suit my fancy." "She is a bit like that," he agreed. "She'll never be satisfied till she's got wings and can fly over everybody's head, she won't," she said. Clara broke in, and he told her his message.
Often, when he went again into the kitchen, Mrs. Leivers would look at him reproachfully, saying: "Paul, don't be so hard on Miriam. She may not be quick, but I'm sure she tries." "I can't help it," he said rather pitiably. "I go off like it." "You don't mind me, Miriam, do you?" he asked of the girl later. "No," she reassured him in her beautiful deep tones "no, I don't mind."
Presently the girl came out. "Tea is ready, mother," she said in a musical, quiet voice. "Oh, thank you, Miriam, then we'll come," replied her mother, almost ingratiatingly. "Would you CARE to have tea now, Mrs. Morel?" "Of course," said Mrs. Morel. "Whenever it's ready." Paul and his mother and Mrs. Leivers had tea together.
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