"Out in the garding, digging gwaves," said Eunice in a fat voice.
Jenny had a sudden longing to have a child of her own and live in a little house quite close to London.
"Why, I don't believe you've ever seen Baby," said Edie.
"Of course I have, but not for some months."
They went upstairs to look at Baby, who was lying asleep in his cot. Jenny felt oppressed by the smallness of the bedroom and the many enlargements of Bert's likeness in youth which dwarfed every other ornament. They recurred everywhere in extravagantly gilt frames; and the original photograph was on the chest of drawers opposite one of Edie wearing a fringe and balloon sleeves.
"There's another coming in five months," said Edie.
The magic of home that for a few moments had enchanted the little house was dispelled. Moreover, at tea Norman smeared his face with jam, and snatched, and kicked his mother because she slapped his wrist.
"Why do you let him behave so bad?" asked Jenny, unconscious that she was already emulating her own hated Aunt Mabel.
"I don't, only he's such a handful; and his dad spoils him. Besides, anything for a bit of peace and quiet. Bert never thinks what a worry children is, and as if I hadn't got enough to look after, he brought back a dog last week."
"Oh, it's easier to humor him. You'll find that out quick enough when you're married yourself."
On the way to the theater that evening Jenny almost made up her mind to join Maurice, and would probably have been constant to her resolve, had it not been for one of those trivial incidents which more often than great events change the whole course of a life.
Because she did not like the idea of sitting in meditation opposite a row of inquisitive faces, she took a seat outside the tramcar that came swaying and clanging down the Camberwell New Road. It was twilight by now, and, as the tramcar swung round into Kennington Gate, there was a wide view of the sky full of purple cloudbanks, islands in a pale blue luminous sea where the lights of ships could easily be conjured from the uncertain stars contending with the afterglow of an April sunset. Jenny sat on the back seat and watched along the Kennington Road the incandescent gas suffuse room after room with a sickly phosphorescence in which the inhabitants seemed to swim like fish in an aquarium. All the rooms thus illuminated looked alike. All the windows had a fretwork of lace curtains; all the tables were covered with black and red checkered cloths on which was superimposed half a white cloth covered with the remains of tea; all the flower vases wore crimped paper petticoats; all the people inside the cheerless rooms looked tired.