E. Nesbit

“ WHEN Daphne looks back at that summer it seems to her that the sun always shone. She sees always the glare of the glazed shop-fronts, the dry pavement that scorched one’s feet, the fruit and flowers and barrows wheeled by hoarse-voiced, anxious-looking people, who sold everything very cheaply. ”

“ Doris, meanwhile, is given over, for eight hours of the twelve that make a child’s day, to Cousin Jane. For it is on her way to and from Henry’s studio that Doris gets to know so well those narrow streets where one has to be careful where one walks, because doorsteps and pavements and gutters are alive with little playing children. There are children not older than Doris, playing the careful, anxious mother to little ones who can just walk, just crawl, and even to pale babes whose age is counted by weeks, whose heavy heads loll on necks thin and fragile. ”

“ Brothers should help each other.”
“I—I was tired,” said Daphne, “and—and life is much more difficult than you think it is going to be.”
“Truth,” said the Russian, squatting on the brick hearth, “truth and again truth, and always truth. There is nothing else that prevents the life to be difficult. In art, truth. In life, truth. And in love, because you are only young once, truth too. Does he not love you?” ”

“ Daphne jumped out, pushed much more than his fare into the hand of the man as he stood rubbing his forehead and cursing his horse and his luck, put up the umbrella, and started to walk what was left of the way. It was much longer than she had thought it would be. The drive had been such a horrible drive—so long, so long, so long. The last time she had come that way she had travelled by the District Railway, and the distance had been nothing. She plodded on through the rain. Her ankles were wet now, so were the skirts that flapped against them. ”

“ Daphne drew near. Cousin Jane began to put the breakfast things together. “Doris, go to the window and see if you can’t see a bit of blue sky—just enough to make a cat a pair of breeches,” Claud urged.
“Cats don’t wear sky-blue breeches—they have cat-skin breeches, you know they do,” said Doris, not moving.
“Well, you look, all the same. If you look very hard perhaps a bit of blue will come, and if it comes it means it’s going to clear up and be fine.” ”

“ We want it to be fine today, but I expect all the farmers have been praying for rain for weeks and weeks, and it wouldn’t do for us to interfere just when they’re getting it. You see, people want different things and—”
“I don’t see the use of saying prayers at all if everyone wants something different,” said Doris.
“I’ll tell you all about it another time,” said Daphne, desperately, and with a guilty knowledge that she had been glad of the rain, glad that there would be no picnic. Everyone else was disappointed. People did indeed want different things. ”

“ In the evening all the windows look like the boxes in a play-house. At each window is at least one spectator of the drama of life in the street below. In the street there are dramatic arguments, fights sometimes. ”

“ Delarue, “it was never me ’abit, but if you did ’ave a bit of a tiff, why not let bygones be bygones? You wouldn’t like to drive a young man to low courses, miss, would you?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” repeated Daphne, much more uncomfortable than before.
“Well, miss, since you ask me,” said Mrs. Delarue, putting down the dust-pan and brush and settling her hands palms downward upon her hips, “I’ll tell you.” ”