“But what is it?” she exclaimed, refusing to be moved.
“Stocks!” he answered, sniffing hastily. “Look, there’s a tubful.”
“So there is—red and white. But really, I never knew stocks to smell like it!” And, to his great relief, she moved out of the doorway, but only to stand in front of the window.
“Paul!” she cried to him, who was trying to get out of sight of the elegant young lady in black—the shop-girl, “Paul! Just look here!”
He came reluctantly back.
“Now, just look at that fuchsia!” she exclaimed, pointing.
“H’m!” He made a curious, interested sound. “You’d think every second as the flowers was going to fall off, they hang so big an’ heavy.”
“And such an abundance!” she cried.
“And the way they drop downwards with their threads and knots!”
“Yes!” she exclaimed. “Lovely!”
“I wonder who’ll buy it!” he said.
“I wonder!” she answered. “Not us.”
“It would die in our parlour.”
“Yes, beastly cold, sunless hole; it kills every bit of a plant you put in, and the kitchen chokes them to death.”
They bought a few things, and set off towards the station Looking up the canal, through the dark pass of the buildings, they saw the Castle on its bluff of brown, green-bushed rock, in a positive miracle of delicate sunshine.
“Won’t it be nice for me to come out at dinner-times?” said Paul. “I can go all round here and see everything. I s’ll love it.”
“You will,” assented his mother.
He had spent a perfect afternoon with his mother. They arrived home in the mellow evening, happy, and glowing, and tired.
In the morning he filled in the form for his season-ticket and took it to the station. When he got back, his mother was just beginning to wash the floor. He sat crouched up on the sofa.
“He says it’ll be here by Saturday,” he said.
“And how much will it be?”
“About one pound eleven,” he said.
She went on washing her floor in silence.
“Is it a lot?” he asked.
“It’s no more than I thought,” she answered.
