He was rather offended at her laughter.
“Some women do—those who look decent,” he said.
Miriam laughed again, but mirthlessly, to hear him thus mix her up with women in a general way. From most men she would have ignored it. But from him it hurt her.
He had nearly finished arranging the flowers when he heard his mother's footstep on the stairs. Hurriedly he pushed in the last pin and turned away.
“Don't let mater know,” he said.
Miriam picked up her books and stood in the doorway looking with chagrin at the beautiful sunset. She would call for Paul no more, she said.
“Good-evening, Mrs. Morel,” she said, in a deferential way. She sounded as if she felt she had no right to be there.
“Oh, is it you, Miriam?” replied Mrs. Morel coolly.
But Paul insisted on everybody's accepting his friendship with the girl, and Mrs. Morel was too wise to have any open rupture.
It was not till he was twenty years old that the family could ever afford to go away for a holiday. Mrs. Morel had never been away for a holiday, except to see her sister, since she had been married. Now at last Paul had saved enough money, and they were all going. There was to be a party: some of Annie's friends, one friend of Paul's, a young man in the same office where William had previously been, and Miriam.
It was great excitement writing for rooms. Paul and his mother debated it endlessly between them. They wanted a furnished cottage for two weeks. She thought one week would be enough, but he insisted on two.
At last they got an answer from Mablethorpe, a cottage such as they wished for thirty shillings a week. There was immense jubilation. Paul was wild with joy for his mother's sake. She would have a real holiday now. He and she sat at evening picturing what it would be like. Annie came in, and Leonard, and Alice, and Kitty. There was wild rejoicing and anticipation. Paul told Miriam. She seemed to brood with joy over it. But the Morel's house rang with excitement.
They were to go on Saturday morning by the seven train. Paul suggested that Miriam should sleep at his house, because it was so far for her to walk. She came down for supper. Everybody was so excited that even Miriam was accepted with warmth. But almost as soon as she entered the feeling in the family became close and tight. He had discovered a poem by Jean Ingelow which mentioned Mablethorpe, and so he must read it to Miriam. He would never have got so far in the direction of sentimentality as to read poetry to his own family. But now they condescended to listen. Miriam sat on the sofa absorbed in him. She always seemed absorbed in him, and by him, when he was present. Mrs. Morel sat jealously in her own chair. She was going to hear also. And even Annie and the father attended, Morel with his head cocked on one side, like somebody listening to a sermon and feeling conscious of the fact. Paul ducked his head over the book. He had got now all the audience he cared for. And Mrs. Morel and Annie almost contested with Miriam who should listen best and win his favour. He was in very high feather.
“But,” interrupted Mrs. Morel, “what IS the 'Bride of Enderby' that the bells are supposed to ring?”
“It's an old tune they used to play on the bells for a warning against water. I suppose the Bride of Enderby was drowned in a flood,” he replied. He had not the faintest knowledge what it really was, but he would never have sunk so low as to confess that to his womenfolk. They listened and believed him. He believed himself.
“And the people knew what that tune meant?” said his mother.
“Yes—just like the Scotch when they heard 'The Flowers o' the Forest'—and when they used to ring the bells backward for alarm.”
“How?” said Annie. “A bell sounds the same whether it's rung backwards or forwards.”
“But,” he said, “if you start with the deep bell and ring up to the high one—der—der—der—der—der—der—der—der!”
He ran up the scale. Everybody thought it clever. He thought so too. Then, waiting a minute, he continued the poem.
“Hm!” said Mrs. Morel curiously, when he finished. “But I wish everything that's written weren't so sad.”
“I canna see what they want drownin' theirselves for,” said Morel.
There was a pause. Annie got up to clear the table.
Miriam rose to help with the pots.
“Let ME help to wash up,” she said.
“Certainly not,” cried Annie. “You sit down again. There aren't many.”
And Miriam, who could not be familiar and insist, sat down again to look at the book with Paul.
He was master of the party; his father was no good. And great tortures he suffered lest the tin box should be put out at Firsby instead of at Mablethorpe. And he wasn't equal to getting a carriage. His bold little mother did that.
“Here!” she cried to a man. “Here!”
Paul and Annie got behind the rest, convulsed with shamed laughter.
“How much will it be to drive to Brook Cottage?” said Mrs. Morel.
“Two shillings.”
“Why, how far is it?”
“A good way.”
“I don't believe it,” she said.
But she scrambled in. There were eight crowded in one old seaside carriage.
“You see,” said Mrs. Morel, “it's only threepence each, and if it were a tramcar—”
They drove along. Each cottage they came to, Mrs. Morel cried:
“Is it this? Now, this is it!”
Everybody sat breathless. They drove past. There was a universal sigh.
“I'm thankful it wasn't that brute,” said Mrs. Morel. “I WAS frightened.” They drove on and on.
At last they descended at a house that stood alone over the dyke by the highroad. There was wild excitement because they had to cross a little bridge to get into the front garden. But they loved the house that lay so solitary, with a sea-meadow on one side, and immense expanse of land patched in white barley, yellow oats, red wheat, and green root-crops, flat and stretching level to the sky.
Paul kept accounts. He and his mother ran the show. The total expenses—lodging, food, everything—was sixteen shillings a week per person. He and Leonard went bathing in the mornings. Morel was wandering abroad quite early.
“You, Paul,” his mother called from the bedroom, “eat a piece of bread-and-butter.”
“All right,” he answered.
And when he got back he saw his mother presiding in state at the breakfast-table. The woman of the house was young. Her husband was blind, and she did laundry work. So Mrs. Morel always washed the pots in the kitchen and made the beds.
“But you said you'd have a real holiday,” said Paul, “and now you work.”
“Work!” she exclaimed. “What are you talking about!”
He loved to go with her across the fields to the village and the sea. She was afraid of the plank bridge, and he abused her for being a baby. On the whole he stuck to her as if he were HER man.
Miriam did not get much of him, except, perhaps, when all the others went to the “Coons”. Coons were insufferably stupid to Miriam, so he thought they were to himself also, and he preached priggishly to Annie about the fatuity of listening to them. Yet he, too, knew all their songs, and sang them along the roads roisterously. And if he found himself listening, the stupidity pleased him very much. Yet to Annie he said:
“Such rot! there isn't a grain of intelligence in it. Nobody with more gumption than a grasshopper could go and sit and