Fourteen
EDITH PAGETT
M rs. Mountford’s back parlour was a comfortable room. It had a round table covered with a cloth, and some old-fashioned armchairs and a stern-looking but unexpectedly well-sprung sofa against the wall. There were china dogsand other ornaments¹ on the mantelpiece, and a framed coloured representation of the Princess Elizabeth and MargaretRose. On another wall was the King in Naval² uniform, and a photograph of Mr. Mountford in a group of other bakersand confectioners. There was a picture made with shells and a watercolour of a very green sea at Capri. There were agreat many other things, none of them with any pretensions³ to beauty or the higher life; but the net result was a happy,cheerful room where people sat round and enjoyed themselves whenever there was time to do so.
Mrs. Mountford, née Pagett, was short and round and darkhaired with a few grey streaks⁴ in the dark. Her sister,Edith Pagett, was tall and dark and thin. There was hardly any grey in her hair though she was at a guess round aboutfifty.
“Fancy now,” Edith Pagett was saying. “Little Miss Gwennie. You must excuse me, m’am, speaking like that, butit does take one back. You used to come into my kitchen, as pretty as could be. ‘Winnies,’ you used to say. ‘Winnies.’
And what you meant was raisins⁵—though why you called them winnies is more than I can say. But raisins was whatyou meant and raisins it was I used to give you, sultanas, that is, on account of the stones.”
Gwenda stared hard at the upright figure and the red cheeks and black eyes, trying to remember—to remember—but nothing came. Memory was an inconvenient⁶ thing.
“I wish I could remember—” she began.
“It’s not likely that you would. Just a tiny little mite⁷, that’s all you were. Nowadays nobody seems to want to go ina house where there’s children. I can’t see it, myself. Children give life to a house, that’s what I feel. Though nurserymeals are always liable to cause a bit of trouble. But if you know what I mean, m’am, that’s the nurse’s fault, not thechild’s. Nurses are nearly always difficult—trays and waiting upon and one thing and another. Do you rememberLayonee at all, Miss Gwennie? Excuse me, Mrs. Reed, I should say.”

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