Life and Death of Harriett Frean | Page 2

she said "Lawk-a-daisy!" Although Papa had given her Emily, she could never feel for her the real, loving love she felt for Ida.
And her mother had told her that she must lend Ida to Connie Hancock if Connie wanted her.
Mamma couldn't see that such a thing was not possible.
"My darling, you mustn't be selfish. You must do what your little guest wants."
"I can't."
But she had to; and she was sent out of the room because she cried. It was much nicer upstairs in the nursery with Mimi, the Angora cat. Mimi knew that something sorrowful had happened. He sat still, just lifting the root of his tail as you stroked him. If only she could have stayed there with Mimi; but in the end she had to go back to the drawing-room.
If only she could have told Mamma what it felt like to see Connie with Ida in her arms, squeezing her tight to her chest and patting her as if Ida had been her child. She kept on saying to herself that Mamma didn't know; she didn't know what she had done. And when it was all over she took the wax doll and put her in the long narrow box she had come in, and buried her in the bottom drawer in the spare-room wardrobe. She thought: If I can't have her to myself I won't have her at all. I've got Emily. I shall just have to pretend she's not an idiot.
She pretended Ida was dead; lying in her pasteboard coffin and buried in the wardrobe cemetery.
It was hard work pretending that Emily didn't look like Mrs. Spinker.

II
She had a belief that her father's house was nicer than other people's houses. It stood off from the high road, in Black's Lane, at the head of the town. You came to it by a row of tall elms standing up along Mr. Hancock's wall. Behind the last tree its slender white end went straight up from the pavement, hanging out a green balcony like a bird cage above the green door.
The lane turned sharp there and went on, and the long brown garden wall went with it. Behind the wall the lawn flowed down from the white house and the green veranda to the cedar tree at the bottom. Beyond the lawn was the kitchen garden, and beyond the kitchen garden the orchard; little crippled apple trees bending down in the long grass.
She was glad to come back to the house after the walk with Eliza, the nurse, or Annie, the housemaid; to go through all the rooms looking for Mimi; looking for Mamma, telling her what had happened.
"Mamma, the red-haired woman in the sweetie shop has got a little baby, and its hair's red, too.... Some day I shall have a little baby. I shall dress him in a long gown-----"
"Robe."
"Robe, with bands of lace all down it, as long as _that_; and a white christening cloak sewn with white roses. Won't he look sweet?"
"Very sweet."
"He shall have lots of hair. I shan't love him if he hasn't."
"Oh, yes, you will."
"No. He must have thick, flossy hair like Mimi, so that I can stroke him. Which would you rather have, a little girl or a little boy?"
"Well--what do you think----?"
"I think--perhaps I'd rather have a little girl."
She would be like Mamma, and her little girl would be like herself. She couldn't think of it any other way.
The school-treat was held in Mr. Hancock's field. All afternoon she had been with the children, playing Oranges and lemons, A ring, a ring of roses, and Here we come gathering nuts in May, nuts in May, nuts in May: over and over again. And she had helped her mother to hand cake and buns at the infants' table.
The guest-children's tea was served last of all, up on the lawn under the immense, brown brick, many windowed house. There wasn't room for everybody at the table, so the girls sat down first and the boys waited for their turn. Some of them were pushing and snatching.
She knew what she would have. She would begin with a bun, and go on through two sorts of jam to Madeira cake, and end with raspberries and cream. Or perhaps it would be safer to begin with raspberries and cream. She kept her face very still, so as not to look greedy, and tried not to stare at the Madeira cake lest people should see she was thinking of it. Mrs. Hancock had given her somebody else's crumby plate. She thought: I'm not greedy. I'm really and truly hungry. She could draw herself in at the waist with a flat, exhausted feeling, like the two ends of a concertina coming together.
She was doing this when she saw her mother standing on the other side of