Suddenly time gave a sharp leap forward and Marcella saw herself sitting
there as Aunt Janet was sitting, a dead soul in a dulled body, waiting
to drop out of life. The words of Wullie and the gipsy slid into her
mind--"they go on strange roads"--and she got a swift vision of herself
in armour riding out gaily along a strange road with her knight beside
her. Elbowing that out came something she had seen that had amazed her a
few days ago. In the evenings she and Aunt Janet sat in the book-room,
into which they had taken a little table of Rose's and a few chairs.
Beside the fire-place had been one of those ancient presses in which the
old farmer had kept his whisky, his pipes and his account books. When
the man from Christy's came to buy the furniture he had noticed the
beautifully carved oak doors of the press and offered such a tempting
sum for them that Aunt Janet had let them go, nailing a piece of old
crested tapestry across the press to hide her books and needlework
inside. They usually sat there together, Marcella reading or dreaming,
Aunt Janet sewing or sitting listless, not even dreaming. But into
Marcella's dreams had come frequent movements of her aunt's hand going
in behind the curtain. Several times when she had spoken to her, Aunt
Janet had waited a few seconds before answering, and then had spoken in
a queerly muffled voice. One day, looking in the cupboard for needle and
cotton, Marcella had seen a big paper bag full of sweets--a thing she
had not seen at the farm since her mother died. They were acid drops;
she took one or two and meant to ask her aunt for some in the evening
when they sat together. But she forgot until, falling into one of her
dreams and staring in the fire, she noticed her aunt take something
almost slyly from the cupboard and put in her mouth behind the cover of
her book, glancing at her furtively as she did so. The amazing fact that
she was eating the acid drops secretly came into her mind and she sat
trying to reason it out for some minutes.