''It is a daughter''s duty, to tend to the grave of her mother. Walk off a while, and don''t watch me.''
So I left her to it, and wandered among the tombs. The ground was hard as iron and my boots made it ring. I walked and thought of my own mother. She didn''t have a grave, they don''t give graves to murderesses. They put their bodies in quicklime.
Did you ever pour salt on the back of a slug? John Vroom used to do it, and then laugh to see the slug fizz. He said to me once,
''Your mother fizzed like that. She fizzed, and ten men died that smelt it!''
He never said it again. I took up a pair of kitchen shears and put them to his neck. I said, ''Bad blood carries. Bad blood comes out.'' And the look on his face was something!♀思♀兔♀網♀
I wondered how Maud would look, if she knew what bad blood flowed in me.
But she never thought to ask. She only sat, gazing hard at her mother''s name, while I wandered and stamped my feet. Then at last she sighed and looked about her, passed her hand across her eyes, and drew up her hood.
''This is a melancholy place,'' she said. ''Let''s walk a little further.''
She led me away from the circle of yews, back down the lane between the hedges, then away from the wood and the ice-house, to t