Big Game - A Story for Girls

"No, Pat is all right. He has the `come-hither eye,' as his mother had

before him!"

"And his aunt!"

Margot chuckled complacently. "Well! it's a valuable thing to possess.

I find it most useful in my various plights. They are dear naughty

boys, both of them, and I always love them, but rather less than usual

when I see you looking so worn out. You have enough strain on you

without turning nursemaid into the bargain."

Mrs Martin sighed, and knitted her delicate brows.

"I do feel such a wicked wretch, but one of the hardest bits of life at

the present is being shut up with the boys in one room all day long.

They are very good, poor dears, but when one is racked with anxiety, it

is a strain to play wild Indians and polar bears for hours at a stretch.

We do some lessons now, and that's a help--and Jack insisted that I

should engage this girl to take them out in the afternoon. I must be a

wretched mother, for I am thankful every day afresh to hear the door

bang behind them, and to know that I am free until tea-time."

"Nonsense! Don't be artificial, Edie! You know that you are nothing of

the sort, and that it's perfectly natural to be glad of a quiet hour.

You are a marvel of patience. I should snap their heads off if I had

them all day, packed up in this little room. What have you had for

lunch? No meat? And you look so white and spent. How wicked of you!"

"Oh, Margot," sighed the other pathetically, "it's not food that I need!

What good can food do when one is racked with anxiety? It's my mind

that is ill, not my body. We can't pay our way even with the rent of

the house coming in, unless Jack gets something to do very soon, and I

am such a stupid, useless thing that I can do nothing to help."

"Except to give up your house, and your servants, and turn yourself into

nurse, and seamstress, and tailor, and dressmaker, rolled into one; and

live in an uproar all day long, and be a perfect angel of sympathy every

night--that's all!--and try to do it on bread and cheese into the

bargain! There must be something inherently mean in women, to skimp

themselves as they do. You'd never find a man who would grudge tenpence

for a chop, however hard up he might be, but a woman spends twopence on

lunch, and a sovereign on tonics! Darling, will it comfort you most if

I sympathise, or encourage? I know there are moods when it's pure

aggravation to be cheerful!"

Edith sighed and smiled at one and the same moment.