Page:Possession (Roche, February 1923).pdf/201



next morning Fawnie came to breakfast—wearing a flowered organdie dress that she had bought at Brancepeth a fortnight before. It had become soiled, and much crushed in the lap from holding the baby. The fasteners that held the neck had come off, and she had secured it with a large safety pin. These were the defects that caught Edmund's eye; he scarcely noticed the beautiful red and brown of her cheeks, or the exquisitely clear markings of her eyelids and lashes.

But Derek did not seem to mind, nor did he show annoyance when she dipped the spoon with which she had been eating thimble-berries into the sugar basin and gave it to the child to suck. Fawnie was inclined to show her authority over Phœbe. In a soft, liquid voice she ordered one thing after another from the kitchen, and, when Phœbe angrily set a plate of toast on the table, at the very end of the meal, she said softly.

"Don't you make so much noise, Phœbe. You act like you'd never had no training." And turning to Edmund, she added, "I been trainin' that girl steady for two months."

Edmund raised his eyebrows. "She seems a good sort," he said, "and good servants are hard to get."

"No, they're not," Fawnie replied, getting more sugar for the baby. "I know where I kin get a good girl any day, and not saucy neither. But I won't have an Indian. They're too lazy. Wasn't I glad when Durek sent all them