Women in Love

'No, really, it's impossible!' Ursula would reply distinctly. And so

the two girls took it out of their universal enemy. But their father

became more and more enraged.

Ursula was all snowy white, save that her hat was pink, and entirely

without trimming, and her shoes were dark red, and she carried an

orange-coloured coat. And in this guise they were walking all the way

to Shortlands, their father and mother going in front.

They were laughing at their mother, who, dressed in a summer material

of black and purple stripes, and wearing a hat of purple straw, was

setting forth with much more of the shyness and trepidation of a young

girl than her daughters ever felt, walking demurely beside her husband,

who, as usual, looked rather crumpled in his best suit, as if he were

the father of a young family and had been holding the baby whilst his

wife got dressed.

'Look at the young couple in front,' said Gudrun calmly. Ursula looked

at her mother and father, and was suddenly seized with uncontrollable

laughter. The two girls stood in the road and laughed till the tears

ran down their faces, as they caught sight again of the shy, unworldly

couple of their parents going on ahead.

'We are roaring at you, mother,' called Ursula, helplessly following

after her parents.

Mrs Brangwen turned round with a slightly puzzled, exasperated look.

'Oh indeed!' she said. 'What is there so very funny about ME, I should

like to know?' She could not understand that there could be anything amiss with her

appearance. She had a perfect calm sufficiency, an easy indifference to

any criticism whatsoever, as if she were beyond it. Her clothes were

always rather odd, and as a rule slip-shod, yet she wore them with a

perfect ease and satisfaction. Whatever she had on, so long as she was

barely tidy, she was right, beyond remark; such an aristocrat she was

by instinct.

'You look so stately, like a country Baroness,' said Ursula, laughing

with a little tenderness at her mother's naive puzzled air.

'JUST like a country Baroness!' chimed in Gudrun. Now the mother's

natural hauteur became self-conscious, and the girls shrieked again.

'Go home, you pair of idiots, great giggling idiots!' cried the father

inflamed with irritation.

'Mm-m-er!' booed Ursula, pulling a face at his crossness.

The yellow lights danced in his eyes, he leaned forward in real rage.

'Don't be so silly as to take any notice of the great gabies,' said Mrs

Brangwen, turning on her way.

'I'll see if I'm going to be followed by a pair of giggling yelling

jackanapes--' he cried vengefully.