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(9)

room, she sang. Rubbing the glass of the long looking glass
and leering sideways at her swinging figure a sound issued
from her lips - something that had been gay twenty years before
on the stage perhaps, had been hummed and danced to, but now
coming from the toothless, bonneted, care-taking woman was
rubbed of meaning, was like the voice of witlessness, humour,
persistency itself trodden down but springing up again, so that
as she lurched, dusting, wiping, she seemed to say how it was one
long sorrow and trouble, how it was getting up and going to bed
again, and bringing things out and putting them away again. It
was not easy or snug this world she had known for close on
eighty years. Bowed down she was with weariness. How long,
she asked, creaking and groaning on her knees under the bed
dusting the boards, how long shall it endure? but hobbled to
her feet again, pulled herself up and again, with her sidelong
leer which slipped and turned aside even from her own face, and
her own sorrows, stood and gaped in the glass, actually smiling,
and began again the old amble and hobble (taking up mats,
putting down china) granting, as she stood the chair straight by
the dressing table, leaning her bony breast on the hard thorn.her forgiveness of it all.
      Was it then that she had her consolations, when, with the
breeze in the west and the clouds white in the sun she stood at
her cottage door? For what reason did there twine about her
dirge this incorrigible hope? and why, with no gift to bestow
and no gift to take did she yet prefer to live,; singing, and

 


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