Designs on Life by Elizabeth Ferrars Page A

before lights had been shining from half the windows in the house, there was only darkness. After all, Meg thought, he must have gone out to look at the snow.
    She had a great curiosity about Mr. Ferguson. It was not that she liked him much, for whenever he came to the house, something very peculiar always happened in it, some deep alteration in its atmosphere that brought a sense of crisis, of things stirring under the surface, almost of peril. Yet he was a cheerful, friendly man who often gave her presents and who had told her how to make a snowman, suggesting that he and she should make one together.
    She was not yet quite convinced, however, that snow was really falling. She could see that something was moving in the air, moving with a wavering lightness, like an old lacy shawl being shaken out by hands delicately careful of its fineness. But still she could see nothing unusual on the ground, no shimmer of whiteness, no crystalline glitter.
    From her conversations with Mrs. Nettle, she remembered a technical term. “Mummy, I don’t believe it’s going to lay.”
    “Lie,” her mother said.
    “Well, I don’t believe—” Meg stopped, because she heard her mother give a deep sigh. She came out from behind the curtain. “Don’t you like snow either? Mrs. Nettle doesn’t. She says—” She stopped again, because it was clear to her that her mother was not listening.
    The child looked at her uneasily. It had happened again, the thing that was always happening these days. Her mother had taken off her coat and hat and was sitting in the armchair by the fire, pressing her hands tightly to her temples, holding back the hair from her face, which was drained of all its brightness. Her body, crouched crookedly in the chair, looked spent of all its energy and her eyes, peering deeply into the fire and far beyond it, were dull and empty.
    The child resented the abrupt change. Her memory was still very short, yet it seemed to her that in a place called Alexandria, which she had already forgotten far more than she pretended, such sharp transitions as this from excitable gaiety to dreary and unexplained lassitude, had hardly ever occurred. She had lived then, she believed, at the heart of a cheerful calm, with an attentive and happy mother to look after her.
    Moving restlessly about the room, Meg tried to draw some attention to herself by her fidgeting, but her mother did not even look at her.
    Presently Meg asked querulously, “Why hasn’t Daddy come home yet?”
    “His train hasn’t got in,” her mother said.
    “But it’s late.”
    Her mother glanced at her wrist-watch. “No, it’s only the snow making it get dark early. All the same, it’s time I was getting the tea.” She stood up. She was frowning, but as she met the child’s gaze, she summoned up a smile. “Did you have a nice afternoon with Mrs. Nettle?”
    “Oh yes, she’s an awfully nice person,” Meg said, responding eagerly.
    “What did you do?”
    “We talked.”
    “All the time?”
    “Well, some of the time we played beggar-my-neighbour, and then I drew a picture for her. Mummy, shall we play cards now?”
    “I’m going to get the tea,” her mother said. “Why don’t you go upstairs to the landing window and see if you can see Daddy’s train come in?”
    “Will you play cards with me after tea?”
    “Just one game, if you like. But then off you go to bed.”
    “All right, but I hope it’s a long game—a terrifically long one!” She laughed and ran upstairs to look out of the landing window.
    It had been her own discovery, on coming to live in this house, and it had greatly raised its value in her eyes, that from this window she could see the railway-line, about a quarter of a mile away. Most of the other windows in the house faced in the opposite direction, towards the common, which her parents, to her surprise, considered an asset. However, they had come to realise the virtue, particularly on rainy days, of having one window in their