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that she did look very like Lady Agnes Blofeld, and her mother had said that was natural, because they had an ancestor in common. But her brother Martin had overheard their parents talking, and had told Clementine he was sure her father was Lord Blofeld. Charles elaborated. Lord Blofeld and Clementine’s mother had to have adjacent rooms at big country-house parties. It was well known by everyone. Dorothy asked if Clementine was very upset. Griselda said she wasn’t sure. She didn’t want to talk about it. Dorothy was distracted by wondering whether Clementine was more Griselda’s friend than she was. Griselda added that Clementine had said she was sure she wasn’t the only one. Charles said Agnes Blofeld was quite put out, because Clementine was prettier and nicer than she was, the same sort of girl, but much more attractive. Tom did not like talk about whether people were attractive. He said, musing,

“If you found out your parents weren’t your parents, would you be a different person?”

“I think so,” said Griselda. Dorothy said it went back to what Auntie Violet had said, about your real mother being the one who took care of you and fed you and so on. She had always known that Violet believed, in some way, that she was their real mother. She saw why, but she did not think of herself, or want to think of herself, as Violet’s daughter.

Griselda said that Clementine had heard her parents shouting at each other, and her mother weeping.

Tom said everyone’s parents shouted at each other, didn’t they? Dorothy remembered being with Tom on the landing, overhearing a violent parental argument. “I have always looked after your children,” one had yelled, and the other had said, “And I may say the same.” Tom and Dorothy both knew that parents in rage referred to the children as “your children.” It was never pleasant for children to overhear such things, it could not be, they had become objects, bones of contention.

Sometimes they played a game of “Who would you like for parents if you didn’t have your real ones?”

You wouldn’t want to play that game if you were Clementine.

Tom thought of his life, the woods, the garden, the books, the human voices, the presences of family in and out of the house, the wonderful movement from comfort to freedom and back.

“We are a happy family,” he said, vaguely and gently. “Have a bull’s-eye? Or a pink fizz?”

Charles asked Dorothy if she was really going to be a doctor, or was it just something she had said?

“I just said it, and saw it was true.”

“I should like to do something like that. I don’t know if I could face all the mess of people being sick, let alone having to carve them up. But I think one should try to do something to make things better. Your father understands that. Mine doesn’t.”

THE SHRUBBERY

HERE WAS ONCE A MOTHER, whose husband had gone on a long voyage, and had neither come back, nor sent any news, for a long time. Consequently, the family had fallen upon hard times, though they lived in a pleasant house in the country, with gardens and orchards. Mothers in stories, in general, are of two kinds. There are mothers who are warm, and devoted, and self-sacrificing, and resourceful and endlessly good-tempered and loving. Then there are the other kind, who are often not mothers, but only stepmothers, who are unkind, and proud, and love some children (their own) better than others, and treat children like kitchen-servants, and will not let them play, or dream. If you had to choose, the mother in this story is a good mother, not a bad stepmother. But she is not perfect, as real human beings are not perfect. She has so many children that they call her Mother Goose, or Old Shoe-Woman, when they are teasing. She does her very best for them. She darns their clothes and turns sheets sides-to-middle, and makes nourishing food out of inexpensive—no, let us say honestly—out of downright cheap things, carefully simmered, made tasty with herbs that cost nothing. She makes sure that those who go to school have waterproof shoes. She scrimps and saves so that each child has some little gift to