Page:Delight - de la Roche - 1926.djvu/131

 against him, all her weight on his chest, her hair tickling his nose and mouth.

Queenie spoke in her sleep:

"Dahy! Dahy!"

"Daddy, eh?" Clinging vines! He'd show them!

Towards noon of the next day Mrs. Bye was lying flat on her back, listening to the hum and rattle of the kitchen below, her hands, like two ivory claws, palms upward on the dingy counterpane. Queenie was cutting out paper dolls on a stool by the head of the bed. She had difficulty in keeping them quiet once they were cut out, for a playful spring breeze blew in at the window and invested them with a malicious liveliness, waving their arms and legs about and prompting them to scurry to the farthermost corner under the bed.

Mrs. Bye was dreaming of her girlhood on a Surrey farm and of a certain young Thomas Clark who used to be sweet on her. She hadn't thought of him for years, but now he stood before her, real as life, smiling shyly as he helped her over a stile. She was smiling, too, when Charley opened the door and looked in at her. . . . Nothing to do but lie there and smile. It made him almost ill himself to think of such selfishness. He came in and slammed the door behind him.

Mrs. Bye awoke with a start to see him towering with his back against the door.

"Oh," she said weakly, "what time is it?" She did not want to know the time and only asked because she was afraid he was going to say something unpleasant.

"Time to get up," he answered majestically. "Time for you to get up and hold down your job, missus." He