Bliss | Page 2

her a nip as she sat down; but she pretended
not to notice. She did hate boys.
"Which will you have?" asked Stanley, leaning across the table very
politely, and smiling at her. "Which will you have to begin
with--strawberries and cream or bread and dripping?"
"Strawberries and cream, please," said she.
"Ah-h-h-h." How they all laughed and beat the table with their
teaspoons. Wasn't that a take-in! Wasn't it now! Didn't he fox her!
Good old Stan!
"Ma! She thought it was real."
Even Mrs. Samuel Josephs, pouring out the milk and water, could not
help smiling. "You bustn't tease theb on their last day," she wheezed.
But Kezia bit a big piece out of her bread and dripping, and then stood
the piece up on her plate. With the bite out it made a dear little sort of
gate. Pooh! She didn't care! A tear rolled down her cheek, but she
wasn't crying. She couldn't have cried in front of those awful Samuel

Josephs. She sat with her head bent, and as the tear dripped slowly
down, she caught it with a neat little whisk of her tongue and ate it
before any of them had seen.
2
After tea Kezia wandered back to their own house. Slowly she walked
up the back steps, and through the scullery into the kitchen. Nothing
was left in it but a lump of gritty yellow soap in one corner of the
kitchen window-sill and a piece of flannel stained with a blue bag in
another. The fireplace was choked up with rubbish. She poked among it
but found nothing except a hair-tidy with a heart painted on it that had
belonged to the servant girl. Even that she left lying, and she trailed
through the narrow passage into the drawing-room. The Venetian blind
was pulled down but not drawn close. Long pencil rays of sunlight
shone through and the wavy shadow of a bush outside danced on the
gold lines. Now it was still, now it began to flutter again, and now it
came almost as far as her feet. Zoom! Zoom! a blue-bottle knocked
against the ceiling; the carpet-tacks had little bits of red fluff sticking to
them.
The dining-room window had a square of coloured glass at each corner.
One was blue and one was yellow. Kezia bent down to have one more
look at a blue lawn with blue arum lilies growing at the gate, and then
at a yellow lawn with yellow lilies and a yellow fence. As she looked a
little Chinese Lottie came out on to the lawn and began to dust the
tables and chairs with a corner of her pinafore. Was that really Lottie?
Kezia was not quite sure until she had looked through the ordinary
window.
Upstairs in her father's and mother's room she found a pill box black
and shiny outside and red in, holding a blob of cotton wool.
"I could keep a bird's egg in that," she decided.
In the servant girl's room there was a stay-button stuck in a crack of the
floor, and in another crack some beads and a long needle. She knew
there was nothing in her grandmother's room; she had watched her pack.

She went over to the window and leaned against it, pressing her hands
to the pane.
Kezia liked to stand so before the window. She liked the feeling of the
cold shining glass against her hot palms, and she liked to watch the
funny white tops that came on her fingers when she pressed them hard
against the pane. As she stood there, the day flickered out and dark
came. With the dark crept the wind snuffling and howling. The
windows of the empty house shook, a creaking came from the walls
and floors, a piece of loose iron on the roof banged forlornly. Kezia
was suddenly quite, quite still, with wide open eyes and knees pressed
together. She was frightened. She wanted to call Lottie and to go on
calling all the while she ran downstairs and out of the house. But IT
was just behind her, waiting at the door, at the head of the stairs, at the
bottom of the stairs, hiding in the passage, ready to dart out at the back
door. But Lottie was at the back door, too.
"Kezia!" she called cheerfully. "The storeman's here. Everything is on
the dray and three horses, Kezia. Mrs. Samuel Josephs has given us a
big shawl to wear round us, and she says to button up your coat. She
won't come out because of asthma."
Lottie was very important.
"Now then, you kids," called the storeman. He hooked his big thumbs
under their arms and up they swung. Lottie arranged the shawl "most
beautifully" and the storeman tucked up their