“Oh, mother!” he said. “How nice of you to come down. How are you?”
The elderly woman, loosely and bulkily wrapped in a purple gown, came forward silently, slightly hulked, as usual. Her son was at her side. He pushed her up a chair, saying “You know Miss Brangwen, don’t you?”
The mother glanced at Gudrun indifferently.
“Yes,” she said. Then she turned her wonderful, forget-me-not blue eyes up to her son, as she slowly sat down in the chair he had brought her.
“I came to ask you about your father,” she said, in her rapid, scarcely-audible voice. “I didn’t know you had company.”
“No? Didn’t Winifred tell you? Miss Brangwen stayed to dinner, to make us a little more lively—”
Mrs Crich turned slowly round to Gudrun, and looked at her, but with unseeing eyes.
“I’m afraid it would be no
