Gwenda was used to this apathy of Ally’s and it had never hurt her till to-day.  To-day she wanted something from Ally.  She didn’t know what it was exactly, but it was something Ally hadn’t got.

She only said, “Have you seen the thorn-trees on Greffington Edge?”

And Ally never answered.  She was heading off a stream of jam that was creeping down Stevey’s chin to plunge into his neck.

“Gwenda’s aasskin’ yo ‘ave yo seen t’ thorn-trees on Greffington Edge,” said Greatorex.  He spoke to Ally as if she were deaf.

She made a desperate effort to detach herself from Stevey.

“The thorn-trees?  Has anybody set fire to them?”

“Tha silly laass!——­”

“What about the thorn-trees, Gwenda?”

“Only that they’re all in flower,” Gwenda said.

She didn’t know where it had come from, the sudden impulse to tell Ally about the beauty of the thorn-trees.

But the impulse had gone.  She thought sadly, “They want me.  But they don’t want me for myself.  They don’t want to talk to me.  They don’t know what to say.  They don’t know anything about me.  They don’t care—­really.  Jim likes me because I’ve stuck to Ally.  Ally loves me because I would have given Steven to her.  They love what I was, not what I am now, nor what I shall be.

“They have nothing for me.”

It was Jim who answered her.  “I knaw,” he said, “I knaw.”

“Oh!  You little, little—­lamb!”

Baby John had his fingers in his mother’s hair.

* * * * *

Greatorex rose.  “You’ll not get mooch out o’ Ally as long as t’ kids are about.  Yo’d best coom wi’ mae into t’ garden and see t’ loopins.”

She went with him.

He was silent as they threaded the garden path together.  She thought,
“I know why I like him.”

They came to a standstill at the south wall where the tall blue lupins rose between them, vivid in the tender air and very still.

Greatorex also was still.  His eyes looked away over the blue spires of the lupins to the naked hillside.  They saw neither the hillside nor anything between.

When he spoke his voice was thick, almost as though he were in love or intoxicated.

“I knaw what yo mane about those thorn-trees.  ‘Tisn’ no earthly beauty what yo see in ’em.”

“Jim,” she said, “shall I always see it?”

“I dawn—­knaw.  It cooms and it goas, doos sech-like.”

“What makes it come?”

“What maakes it coom?  Yo knaw better than I can tall yo.”

“If I only did know.  I’m afraid it’s going.”

“I can tell yo this for your coomfort.  Ef yo soofer enoof mebbe it’ll coom t’ yo again.  Ef yo’re snoog and ’appy sure’s death it’ll goa.”

He paused.

“It ‘assn’t coom t’ mae sence I married Ally.”

She was wrong about Jim.  He had not forgotten her.  He was not saying these things for himself; he was saying them for her, getting them out of himself with pain and difficulty.  It was odd to think that nobody but she understood Jim, and that nobody but Jim had ever really understood her.  Steven didn’t understand her, any more than Ally understood her husband.  And it made no difference to her, and it made no difference to Jim.