Page 121 - women-in-love

passed so swiftly.
After tea, they were all gathered for a walk.
‘Would you like to come for a walk?’ said Hermione
to each of them, one by one. And they all said yes, feeling
somehow like prisoners marshalled for exercise. Birkin only
refused.
‘Will you come for a walk, Rupert?’
‘No, Hermione.’
‘But are you SURE?’
‘Quite sure.’ There was a second’s hesitation.
‘And why not?’ sang Hermione’s question. It made her
blood run sharp, to be thwarted in even so trifling a matter.
She intended them all to walk with her in the park.
‘Because I don’t like trooping off in a gang,’ he said.
Her voice rumbled in her throat for a moment. Then she
said, with a curious stray calm:
‘Then we’ll leave a little boy behind, if he’s sulky.’
And she looked really gay, while she insulted him. But it
merely made him stiff.
She trailed off to the rest of the company, only turning to
wave her handkerchief to him, and to chuckle with laugh-
ter, singing out:
‘Good-bye, good-bye, little boy.’
‘Good-bye, impudent hag,’ he said to himself.
They all went through the park. Hermione wanted to
show them the wild daffodils on a little slope. ‘This way, this
way,’ sang her leisurely voice at intervals. And they had all
to come this way. The daffodils were pretty, but who could
see them? Ursula was stiff all over with resentment by this

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