She added that Col-Col was her favourite.
xi It was the last week of the holidays. Rain had come with the west wind.
The hills were drawn back behind thick sheets of glassy rain. Shining
spears of rain dashed themselves against the west windows. Jets of rain
rose up, whirling and spraying, from the terrace. Rain ran before the
wind in a silver scud along the flagged path under the south front.
The wind made hard, thudding noises as if it pounded invisible bodies in
the air. It screamed high above the drumming and hissing of the rain.
It excited the children.
From three o'clock till tea-time the sponge fight stormed up and down
the passages. The house was filled with the sound of thudding feet and
shrill laughter.
Adeline lay on the sofa in the library. Eliot was with her there.
She was amused, but a little plaintive when they rushed in to her.
"It's perfectly awful the noise you children are making. I'm tired out
with it."
Jerrold flung himself on her. "Tired? What must _we_ be?"
But he wasn't tired. His madness still worked in him. It sought some
supreme expression.
"What can we play at next?" said Anne.
"What can we play at next?" said Colin.
"Something quiet, for goodness sake," said his mother.
They were very quiet, Jerrold and Anne and Colin, as they set the
booby-trap for Pinkney. Very quiet as they watched Pinkney's innocent
approach. The sponge caught him--with a delightful, squelching
flump--full and fair on the top of his sleek head.
Anne shrieked with delight. "Oh Jerry, did you _hear_ him say 'Damn'?"
They rushed back to the library to tell Eliot. But Eliot couldn't see
that it was funny. He said it was a rotten thing to do.
"When he's a servant and can't do anything to _us_."
"I never thought of that," said Jerrold. (It _was_ pretty rotten.) ...
"I could ask him to bowl to me and let him get me out."
"He'd do that in any case."
"Still--I'll have _asked_ him."
But it seemed that Pinkney was in no mood to think of cricket, and they
had to be content with begging his pardon, which he gave, as he said,
"freely." Yet it struck them that he looked sadder than a booby-trap
should have made him.
It was just before bed-time that Eliot told them the awful thing.
"I suppose you know," he said, "that Pinkney's mother's dying?"
"I didn't," said Jerrold. "But I might have known. I notice that when
you're excited, _really_ excited, something awful's bound to happen....
Don't cry, Anne. It was beastly of us, but we didn't know."