i Anne Severn had come again to the Fieldings. This time it was because

her mother was dead.

She hadn't been in the house five minutes before she asked "Where's

Jerrold?"

"Fancy," they said, "her remembering."

And Jerrold had put his head in at the door and gone out again when he

saw her there in her black frock; and somehow she had known he was

afraid to come in because her mother was dead.

Her father had brought her to Wyck-on-the-Hill that morning, the day

after the funeral. He would leave her there when he went back to India.

She was walking now down the lawn between the two tall men. They were

taking her to the pond at the bottom where the goldfish were. It was

Jerrold's father who held her hand and talked to her. He had a nice

brown face marked with a lot of little fine, smiling strokes, and his

eyes were quick and kind.

"You remember the goldfish, Anne?"

"I remember everything."

She had been such a little girl before, and they said she had forgotten.

But she remembered so well that she always thought of Mr. Fielding as

Jerrold's father. She remembered the pond and the goldfish. Jerrold held

her tight so that she shouldn't tumble in. She remembered the big grey

and yellow house with its nine ball-topped gables; and the lawn, shut in

by clipped yew hedges, then spreading downwards, like a fan, from the

last green terrace where the two enormous peacocks stood, carved out of

the yew.

Where it lay flat and still under the green wall she saw the tennis

court. Jerrold was there, knocking balls over the net to please little

Colin. She could see him fling back his head and laugh as Colin ran

stumbling, waving his racquet before him like a stiff flag. She heard

Colin squeal with excitement as the balls flew out of his reach.

Her father was talking about her. His voice was sharp and anxious.

"I don't know how she'll get on with your boys." (He always talked about

Anne as if she wasn't there.) "Ten's an awkward age. She's too old for

Colin and too young for Eliot and Jerrold."

She knew their ages. Colin was only seven. Eliot, the clever one, was

very big; he was fifteen. Jerrold was thirteen.

She heard Jerrold's father answering in his quiet voice.

"You needn't worry. Jerry'll look after Anne all right."

"And Adeline."

"Oh yes, of course, Adeline." (Only somehow he made it sound as if she

wouldn't.) Adeline was Mrs. Fielding. Jerrold's mother.




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