Maggie blundered up the kitchen stairs with the teapot and hot
toast; and so Sophia had an excuse for silence. Sophia too had
suffered much, suffered excruciatingly; she carried at that moment
a whole tragedy in her young soul, unaccustomed to such burdens.
Her attitude towards her mother was half fearful and half defiant;
it might be summed up in the phrase which she had repeated again
and again under her breath on the way home, "Well, mother can't
kill me!"
Mrs. Baines put down the blue-covered magazine and twisted her
rocking-chair towards the table.
"You can pour out the tea," said Mrs. Baines.
"Where's Constance?"
"She's not very well. She's lying down."
"Anything the matter with her?"
"No."
This was inaccurate. Nearly everything was the matter with
Constance, who had never been less Constance than during that
afternoon. But Mrs. Baines had no intention of discussing
Constance's love-affairs with Sophia. The less said to Sophia
about love, the better! Sophia was excitable enough already!
They sat opposite to each other, on either side of the fire--the
monumental matron whose black bodice heavily overhung the table,
whose large rounded face was creased and wrinkled by what seemed
countless years of joy and disillusion; and the young, slim girl,
so fresh, so virginal, so ignorant, with all the pathos of an
unsuspecting victim about to be sacrificed to the minotaur of
Time! They both ate hot toast, with careless haste, in silence,
preoccupied, worried, and outwardly nonchalant.
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