Janet walked across the yard in a daze. “What a man!” she thought. “So mean one minute and so nice the next. Will I ever understand him?”

Section 6

Janet and Iris walked to the Haines’. Gladys had laid out on Iris’ bed the clothes into which the child was to change, and Janet, with Donald’s words in her ears, had put them on her without protest. Not that she did not protest internally, she did; she thought it an insufferable position, to be only partly in charge, and for the rest under Gladys’ orders. The clothes, in her opinion, were unsuitable for going out to tea in the country, and she marvelled that Gladys, who looked so soignée herself, could have selected them. There was a fussy organdie frock over a silk slip, silk socks, white shoes and a hat trimmed with ribbons. Iris was delighted to dress up. She pirouetted round the room, and then held out her skirt and danced a few steps.

“I feel like Cinderella when I put this on. I should think she wore something very like this to go to the ball, wouldn’t you?”

Janet’s mind was on the dancing steps and pirouettes.

“Have you been to a dancing class?”

Iris pirouetted again.

“Not since Mummy died; she taught me. Every day we practised since I was three. ’Course when I was very little I just did a polka, but at my last lessons I was doing real exercises.”

It was lovely out. Janet was almost dazzled by the intense green of the fields, and fascinated as the wind ruffled the surface, and shadow and sunlight made an ever-changing picture. To her town eye Donald’s fields were just grass, but Iris put her wise.

“Daddy’s got strong wheat, hasn’t he?”

“Has he?” Janet studied the young green on her left. Then she looked to the right and, not wishing to seem ignorant, said admiringly, “Magnificent wheat.”

Iris pealed with laughter.

“That isn’t wheat, that’s oats.”

Janet could see no difference whatsoever, stare as she would. There were fields of corn on each side of the path. When they came level with the second fields, Iris, enchanted to show off, called out:

“What’s that, Janet? What’s that?”

Janet stared blankly at two more fields of incredibly brilliant green. The obvious answer was grass, but that plainly was wrong.

“Corn?”

“’Course. What sort?”

Janet gave in.

“I haven’t the faintest idea, I’m a silly Londoner, you’ll have to teach me.”

Iris flung herself at her.