Giant’s Bread · Book I · VII · Chapter 1 7 3

III

To Myra, Joe was a perplexing child. She had nice manners, answered promptly and politely when spoken to, and submitted to caresses without returning them. She was very independent and gave the maid told off to attend to her little or nothing to do. She could mend her own clothes and keep herself neat and tidy without any outside urging. She was, in fact, the sophisticated hotel child whom Myra had never happened to come across. The depths of her knowledge would have horrified and shocked her aunt.

But Joe was shrewd and quick-witted, well used to summing up the people with whom she came in contact. She refrained carefully from “shocking Aunt Myra.” She had for her something closely akin to a kindly contempt.

“Your mother,” she said to Vernon, “is very good⁠—but she’s a little stupid too, isn’t she?”

“She’s very beautiful,” said Vernon hotly.

“Yes, she is,” agreed Joe. “All but her hands. Her hair’s lovely. I wish I had red-gold hair.”

“It comes right down below her waist,” said Vernon.

He found Joe a wonderful companion, quite unlike his previous conception of “girls.” She hated dolls, never cried, was as strong if not stronger than he was, and was always ready and willing for any dangerous sport. Together they climbed trees, rode bicycles, fell and cut and bumped themselves, and ended up by taking a wasps’ nest together, with a success due more to luck than skill.

To Joe, Vernon could talk and did. She opened up to him a strange new world, a world where people ran away with other people’s husbands and wives, a world of dancing and gambling and cynicism. She had loved her mother with a fierce protective tenderness that almost reversed the roles.

“She was too soft,” said Joe. “I’m not going to be soft. People are mean to you if you are. Men are beasts anyway, but if you’re a beast to them first, they’re all right. All men are beasts.”

“That’s a silly thing to say, and I don’t think it’s true.”

“That’s because you’re going to be a man yourself.”

“No, it isn’t. And anyway I’m not a beast.”

“No, but I dare say you will be when you’re grown up.”

“But, look here, Joe, you’ll have to marry someone some day, and you won’t think your husband a beast.”

“Why should I marry anyone?”

“Well⁠—girls do. You don’t want to be an old maid like Miss Crabtree.”

Joe wavered. Miss Crabtree was an elderly spinster who was very active in the village and who was very fond of “the dear children.”

“I shouldn’t be the kind of old maid Miss Crabtree is,” she said weakly. “I should⁠—oh! I should do things. Play the violin, or write books, or paint some marvellous pictures.”

“I hope you won’t play the violin,” said Vernon.

“That’s really what I should like to do best. Why do you hate music so, Vernon?”

“I don’t know. I just do. It makes me feel all horrible inside.”

“How queer. It gives me a nice feeling. What are you going to do when you grow up?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I’d like to marry someone very beautiful and live at Abbots Puissants and have lots of horses and dogs.”

“How dull,” said Joe. “I don’t think that would be exciting a bit.”

“I don’t know that I want things to be very exciting,” said Vernon.

“I do,” said Joe. “I want things to be exciting the whole time without ever stopping.”