I


CHILDREN

i

Anne Severn had come again to the Fieldings. This time it was because
her mother was dead.

She hadn't been in the house five minutes before she asked "Where's
Jerrold?"

"Fancy," they said, "her remembering."

And Jerrold had put his head in at the door and gone out again when he
saw her there in her black frock; and somehow she had known he was
afraid to come in because her mother was dead.

Her father had brought her to Wyck-on-the-Hill that morning, the day
after the funeral. He would leave her there when he went back to India.

She was walking now down the lawn between the two tall men. They were
taking her to the pond at the bottom where the goldfish were. It was
Jerrold's father who held her hand and talked to her. He had a nice
brown face marked with a lot of little fine, smiling strokes, and his