'The
hair do darken a lot, but hers will never be black. It's my opinion
as it'll be fair.'
Madge did not speak, and Mrs Caffyn, who was sitting at the head of
the couch, put her work and her spectacles on the table. It was
growing dusk; she took Madge's hand, which hung down by her side, and
gently lifted it up. Such a delicate hand, Mrs Caffyn thought. She
was proud that she had for a friend the owner of such a hand, who
behaved to her as an equal. It was delightful to be kissed--no mere
formal salutations--by a lady fit to go into the finest drawing-room
in London, but it was a greater delight that Madge's talk suited her
better than any she had heard at Great Oakhurst. It was natural she
should rejoice when she discovered, unconsciously that she had a
soul, to which the speech of the stars, though somewhat strange, was
not an utterly foreign tongue.
She retained her hold on Madge's hand.
'May be,' she continued, 'it'll be like its father's. In our family
all the gals take after the father, and all the boys after the
mother. I suppose as HE has lightish hair?'
Still Madge said nothing.
'It isn't easy to believe as the father of that blessed dear could
have been a bad lot. I'm sure he isn't, and yet there's that
Polesden gal at the farm, she as went wrong with Jim, a great ugly
brute, and she herself warnt up to much, well, as I say, her child
was the delicatest little angel as I ever saw.
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