But she lay quite still on the
ground, and father came half-way through the gate, and then turned
and ran off down the hill towards the station. Jack stood in the
window, clapping his hands and laughing; it was a strange game, but
not much harder to understand than most of the amusements of the
grown-up people. And then as nothing happened, as mother did not move and father did
not come back, Jack grew frightened. The garden was queer and the
room was full of darkness, so he beat on the window to change the
game. Then, since mother did not shake her head, he ran out into the
garden, smiling carefully in case he was being silly. First he went
to the gate, but father was quite small far down the road, so he
turned back and pulled the sleeve of his mother's dress, to wake her. After a dreadful while mother got up off the ground with her skirt
all covered with wet earth. Jack tried to brush it off with his hands
and made a mess of it, but she did not seem to notice, looking across
the garden with such a desolate face, that when he saw it he burst
into tears. For once mother let him cry himself out without seeking
to comfort him; when he sniffed dolefully, his nostrils were full of
the scent of crushed marigolds. He could not help watching her hands
through his tears; it seemed as though they were playing together at
cat's-cradle; they were not still for a moment. But it was her face
that at once frightened and interested him. One minute it looked
smooth and white as if she was very cross, and the next minute it was
gathered up in little folds as if she was going to sneeze. Deep down
in him something chuckled, and he jumped for fear that the cross part
of her had heard it. At intervals during the evening, while mother
was getting him his supper, this chuckle returned to him, between
unnoticed fits of crying. Once she stood holding a plate in the
middle of the room for quite five minutes, and he found it hard to
control his mirth. If father had been there they would have had good
fun together, teasing mother, but by himself he was not sure of his
ground. And father did not come back, and mother did not seem to hear
his questions. He had some tomatoes and rice-pudding for his supper, and as mother
left him to help himself to brown sugar he enjoyed it very much,
carefully leaving the skin of the rice-pudding to the last, because
that was the part he liked best. After supper he sat nodding at the
open window, looking out over the plum-trees to the sky beyond, where
the black clouds were putting out the stars one by one. The garden
smelt stuffy, but it was nice to be allowed to sit up when you felt
really sleepy. On the whole he felt that it had been a pleasant,
exciting sort of day, though once or twice mother had frightened him
by looking so strange. There had been other mysterious days in his
life, however; perhaps he was going to have another little dead
sister. Presently he discovered that it was delightful to shut your
eyes and nod your head and pretend that you were going to sleep; it
was like being in a swing that went up and up and never came down
again. It was like being in a rowing-boat on the river after a
steamer had gone by. It was like lying in a cradle under a lamplit
ceiling, a cradle that rocked gently to and fro while mother sang
far-away songs. He was still a baby when he woke up, and he slipped off his chair
and staggered blindly across the room to his mother, with his
knuckles in his eyes like a little, little boy. He climbed into her
lap and settled himself down with a grunt of contentment. There was
a mutter of thunder in his ears, and he felt great warm drops of
rain falling on his face. And into his dreams he carried the dim
consciousness that the thunderstorm had begun. II

The next morning at breakfast-time father had not come back, and
mother said a lot of things that made Jack feel very uncomfortable. She herself had taught him that any one who said bad things about
his father was wicked, but now it seemed that she was trying to tell
him something about father that was not nice. She spoke so slowly
that he hardly understood a word she said, though he gathered that
father had stolen something, and would be put in prison if he was
caught. With a guilty pang he remembered his own dealings with his
money-box, and he determined to throw away the rest of the sweets
when, nobody was looking. Then mother made the astounding statement
that he was not to go to school that day, but his sudden joy was
checked a little when she said he was not to go out at all, except
into the back garden. It seemed to Jack that he must be ill, but
when he made this suggestion to mother, she gave up her explanations
with a sigh. Afterwards she kept on saying aloud, "I must think, I
must think!" She said it so often that Jack started keeping count on
his fingers. The day went slowly enough, for the garden was wet after the
thunderstorm, and mother would not play any games. Just before
tea-time two gentlemen called and talked to mother in the
parlour, and after a while they sent for Jack to answer some
questions about father, though mother was there all the time. They seemed nice gentlemen, but mother did not ask them to stop
to tea, as Jack expected. He thought that perhaps she was sorry
that she had not done so, for she was very sad all tea-time, and
let him spread his own bread and jam. When tea was over things
were very dull, and at last Jack started crying because there
was nothing else to do. Presently he heard a little noise and
found that mother was crying as well. This seemed to him so
extraordinary that he stopped crying to watch her; the tears ran
down her cheeks very quickly, and she kept on wiping them away
with her handkerchief, but if she held her handkerchief to her
eyes perhaps they would not be able to come out at all. It
occurred to him that possibly she was sorry she had said, wicked
things about father, and to comfort her, for it made him feel
fidgety to see her cry, he whispered to her that he would not
tell. But she stared at him hopelessly through her red eyelids,
and he felt that he had not said the right thing. She called him
her poor boy, and yet it appeared that he was not ill. It was
all very mysterious and uncomfortable, and it would be a good
thing when father came back and everything went on as before,
even though he had to go back to school. Later on the woman from the mill came in to sit with mother. She
brought Jack some sweets, but instead of playing with him she burst
into tears. She made more noise when she cried than mother; in fact
he was afraid that in a minute he would have to laugh at her
snortings, so he went into the parlour and sat there in the dark,
eating his sweets, and knitting his brow over the complexities of
life. He could see five stars, and there was a light behind the red
curtain of the front bedroom at Arber's farm. It was about twelve
times as large as a star, and a much prettier colour.