Since the evening when she had found Thyme in foods of tears
because of the Hughs' baby, her maternal eyes had not failed to notice
something new in the child's demeanour--a moodiness, an air almost of
conspiracy, together with an emphatic increase of youthful sarcasm:
Fearful of probing deep, she had sought no confidence, nor had she
divulged her doubts to Stephen.
Amongst the blouses a sheet of blue ruled paper, which had evidently
escaped from a notebook, caught her eye. Sentences were scrawled on it
in pencil. Cecilia read: "That poor little dead thing was so grey and
pinched, and I seemed to realise all of a sudden how awful it is for
them. I must--I must--I will do something!"
Cecilia dropped the sheet of paper; her hand was trembling. There was no
mystery in that departure now, and Stephen's words came into her mind:
"It's all very well up to a certain point, and nobody sympathises
with them more than I do; but after that it becomes destructive of all
comfort, and that does no good to anyone."
The sound sense of those words had made her feel queer when they were
spoken; they were even more sensible than she had thought. Did her
little daughter, so young and pretty, seriously mean to plunge into the
rescue work of dismal slums, to cut herself adrift from sweet sounds and
scents and colours, from music and art, from dancing, flowers, and all
that made life beautiful? The secret forces of fastidiousness, an inborn
dread of the fanatical, and all her real ignorance of what such a life
was like, rose in Cecilia with a force which made her feel quite sick.
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