Page:Night and Day (1919).pdf/195

 holding it at an angle which suited his bad eyesight, without pausing in his walk.

“Where does this fellow come from? One of Elizabeth’s roses—I hope you asked her leave. Elizabeth doesn’t like having her roses picked without her leave, and quite right, too.”

He had a habit, Mary remarked, and she had never noticed it so clearly before, of letting his sentences tail away into a continuous murmur, whereupon he passed into a state of abstraction, presumed by his children to indicate some train of thought too profound for utterance.

“What?” said Mary, interrupting, for the first time in her life, perhaps, when the murmur ceased. He made no reply. She knew very well that he wished to be left alone, but she stuck to his side much as she might have stuck to some sleep-walker, whom she thought it right gradually to awaken. She could think of nothing to rouse him with except:

“The garden’s looking very nice, father.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” said Mr. Datchet, running his words together in the same abstracted manner, and sinking his head yet lower upon his breast. And suddenly, as they turned their steps to retrace their way, he jerked out:

“The traffic’s very much increased, you know. More rolling-stock needed already. Forty trucks went down yesterday by the 12.15─counted them myself. They’ve taken off the 9.3, and given us an 8.30 instead—suits the business men, you know. You came by the old 3.10 yesterday, I suppose?”

She said “Yes,” as he seemed to wish for a reply, and then he looked at his watch, and made off down the path towards the house, holding the rose at the same angle in front of him. Elizabeth had gone round to the side of the house, where the chickens lived, so that Mary found herself alone, holding Ralph’s letter in her hand. She was