175 The Daughters of the Late Colonel: I

The week after was one of the busiest weeks of their lives. Even when they went to bed it was only their bodies that lay down and rested; their minds went on, thinking things out, talking things over, wondering, deciding, trying to remember where…

Constantia lay like a statue, her hands by her sides, her feet just overlapping each other, the sheet up to her chin. She stared at the ceiling.

“Do you think father would mind if we gave his top-hat to the porter?”

“The porter?” snapped Josephine. “Why ever the porter? What a very extraordinary idea!”

“Because,” said Constantia slowly, “he must often have to go to funerals. And I noticed at—at the cemetery that he only had a bowler.” She paused. “I thought then how very much he’d appreciate a top-hat. We ought to give him a present, too. He was always very nice to father.”

“But,” cried Josephine, flouncing on her pillow and staring across the dark at Constantia, “father’s head!” And suddenly, for one awful moment, she nearly giggled. Not, of course, that she felt in the least like giggling. It must have been habit. Years ago, when they had stayed awake at night talking, their beds had simply heaved. And now the porter’s head, disappearing, popped out, like a candle, under father’s hat… The giggle mounted, mounted; she clenched her hands; she fought it down; she frowned fiercely at the dark and said “Remember” terribly sternly.

“We can decide to-morrow,” she said.

Constantia had noticed nothing; she sighed.

“Do you think we ought to have our dressing-gowns dyed as well?”

“Black?” almost shrieked Josephine.

“Well, what else?” said Constantia. “I was thinking—it doesn’t seem quite sincere, in a way, to wear black out of doors and when we’re fully dressed, and then when we’re at home—”

“But nobody sees us,” said Josephine. She gave the bedclothes such a twitch that both her feet became uncovered, and she had to creep up the pillows to get them well under again.

“Kate does,” said Constantia. “And the postman very well might.”

Josephine thought of her dark-red slippers, which matched her dressing-gown, and of Constantia’s favourite indefinite green ones which went with hers. Black! Two black dressing-gowns and two pairs of black woolly slippers, creeping off to the bathroom like black cats.

“I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary,” said she.

Silence. Then Constantia said, “We shall have to post the papers with the notice in them to-morrow to catch the Ceylon mail… How many letters have we had up till now?”

“Twenty-three.”

Josephine had replied to them all, and twenty-three times when she came to “We miss our dear father so much” she had broken down and had to use her handkerchief, and on some of them even to soak up a very light-blue tear with an edge of blotting-paper. Strange! She couldn’t have put it on—but twenty-three times. Even now, though, when she said over to herself sadly “We miss our dear father so much,” she could have cried if she’d wanted to.

“Have you got enough stamps?” came from Constantia.

“Oh, how can I tell?” said Josephine crossly. “What’s the good of asking me that now?”

“I was just wondering,” said Constantia mildly.

Silence again. There came a little rustle, a scurry, a hop.

“A mouse,” said Constantia.

“It can’t be a mouse because there aren’t any crumbs,” said Josephine.

“But it doesn’t know there aren’t,” said Constantia.

A spasm of pity squeezed her heart. Poor little thing! She wished she’d left a tiny piece of biscuit on the dressing-table. It was awful to think of it not finding anything. What would it do?

“I can’t think how they manage to live at all,” she said slowly.

“Who?” demanded Josephine.

And Constantia said more loudly than she meant to, “Mice.”

Josephine was furious. “Oh, what nonsense, Con!” she said. “What have mice got to do with it? You’re asleep.”

“I don’t think I am,” said Constantia. She shut her eyes to make sure. She was.

Josephine arched her spine, pulled up her knees, folded her arms so that her fists came under her ears, and pressed her cheek hard against the pillow.