Page:Encounters (Bowen).djvu/162

 barely raised his eyes from his book—she had never been able to understand his passion for self-education. As she finished the things she had taken them upstairs and locked them away, and sometimes she would put down her sewing and rattle her work-box maddeningly, and look at him across the fire and sigh It would be wonderful to watch Pussy sewing. He could hear her moving about in the hall—such a Pussy!—hanging up his overcoat, then opening the oak chest and rattling things about in it for all the world as though she were after a mouse.

"I found some pictures," she said, coming up behind him with a stack of something in her arms. "Come into the drawing-room and we'll look." The young fire gave out a fitful light, and they knelt down on the hearthrug and put their heads together over the pictures. "Nursery pictures," said Pussy—she must have been up in the attic, he wished he had cleared the contents of it out of his house. He stared at the smiling shepherdesses, farmer-boys and woolly lambs. "They are nursery pictures, aren't they