His studies she did not
understand, but his stories she read aloud with patient resignation to
the children. She marked the place when the reading was interrupted
with a crimson paper-knife, and often Jimbo would move it several
pages farther on without any of them discovering the gap. Jane Anne,
however, who made no pretence of listening to 'Daddy's muddle-
stories,' was beginning to realise what went on in Mother's mind
underground. She hardly seized the pathos, but she saw and understood
enough to help. And she was in many ways a little second edition--a
phrase the muddle-stories never knew, alas!--of her mother, with the
same unselfishness that held a touch of grandeur, the same clever
domestic instinct for contrivance, and the same careful ways that yet
sat ill upon a boundless generosity of heart beneath. She loved to be
thought older than she was, and she used the longest, biggest,
grandest words she could possibly invent or find.
And the village life suited them all in all respects, for, while there
was no degrading poverty anywhere, all the inhabitants, from the
pasteur to the carpenter, knew the exact value of a centime; there was
no question of keeping up impossible appearances, but a general
frankness with regard to the fundamental values of clothing, food, and
education that all shared alike and made no pretence about.
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