Mrs. Engels Read Online Free PDF

eyes and purses his lips as if to say, “Don’t look at me, I’ve had a lifetime of it.”
    Once outside the gate, Frederick and Karl stride ahead, arm in crook, their heads tilted close so as not to drop anything important between them. The Girls hold hands and swing their arms like children; they each lead a dog by a strap. Jenny lets them gain a bit of distance before drawing me in and sallying forwards. Nim follows with the basket.
    â€œNothing extravagant,” says Jenny. “Just some roast veal, some bread and cheese, some ale.”
    I turn and smile a weak smile at Nim, the tiny doll straining under the poundage.
    The Men wait for us at the Heath’s edge. Karl asks whether it’s a good idea to go to the usual spot, given the strong breeze. “Would some place more sheltered be better?”
    Jenny suggests under one of the big oaks, and we agree. Ohing and ahing like she’s just solved the National Debt, we agree. And I, for one, must be careful of my mood.
    We set off again. The dogs are released onto the grass. Tussy skips after them. A sullen-looking Janey searches for flowers to press. The trees are tossed. The wind is loud in the leaves. The kites in the air fly slanted and set their owners straining. Down in my bad lung there’s a pain. Naught to fret over, but there. Too much fast air after these long days spent between the dust of the mattress and the smoke of the fireside.
    â€œKarl is so happy to have Frederick nearby again,” says Jenny now. “It does me good to see him happy, he’s been so nervous of late.”
    â€œI’m glad, Jenny. That’s nice to hear.”
    â€œOf course, he hasn’t been alone. My own hair is gone gray thinking about Laura in France. Her second baby lost, and now pregnant again. Caught up in this damned war. It has us all hysterical.”
    â€œYou oughtn’t worry, Jenny. Laura’ll be fine. Doesn’t she have Paul to look after her?”
    â€œPaul?” she says, whipping a handkerchief from her sleeve and making a whisk of it at me. “Paul is French . And a politics man.”
    â€œ Mohme! ” Tussy is calling from about twenty yards. “ Mohme! Mohme! ”
    â€œWhat is it?” Jenny says without slowing her gait.
    Tussy runs to catch up with us. She comes round us and, walking backwards, her hem dancing around her boots and liable to trip her up, holds out a feather. “Look what I found. Which bird is it from, do you think?”
    Sighing, Jenny takes it and runs it through her fingers. “A common magpie,” she says, and hands it back.
    Tussy looks at it a moment, disdainful, and drops it. Wanders back onto the grass.
    â€œAnd it’s not only Laura,” Jenny says when we’re out of ear-shot again. “I also worry for these two. Look at Janey there and tell me she isn’t radiant? And Tussy, perhaps she even more so. But I’m anxious. I’m anxious that, for this same reason, they are all the more out of place and out of time. And with the life we give them, how will they ever meet a good ordinary man?”
    â€œHow will any of us?” I says.
    She squeezes my arm and grants me a smile. “Oh, Lizzie, you are funny. But perhaps I am not expressing myself well. I speak of a subject it is hard for people who do not have children themselves to understand. A mother will look at her children, and if she sees that one of them has already been denied the chance of a happy kind of life, she will naturally worry that the others will go the same way. I know I sound like a philistine when I say it, Lizzie, but if they could but find husbands, a German or even an Englishman if he had a solid position, and get themselves comfortably settled; if they could do that, I wouldn’t mind my own losses so much. The last thing I want is that they have the kind of life I have had. Often I think I would like to turn away from politics altogether, or at