Birkin could not guess what she was
looking for, nor what she was thinking. Evidently she noticed her sons.
'Are my children all there?' she asked him abruptly.
He laughed, startled, afraid perhaps.
'I scarcely know them, except Gerald,' he replied.
'Gerald!' she exclaimed. 'He's the most wanting of them all. You'd
never think it, to look at him now, would you?'
'No,' said Birkin.
The mother looked across at her eldest son, stared at him heavily for
some time.
'Ay,' she said, in an incomprehensible monosyllable, that sounded
profoundly cynical. Birkin felt afraid, as if he dared not realise. And
Mrs Crich moved away, forgetting him. But she returned on her traces.
'I should like him to have a friend,' she said. 'He has never had a
friend.'
Birkin looked down into her eyes, which were blue, and watching
heavily. He could not understand them. 'Am I my brother's keeper?' he
said to himself, almost flippantly.
Then he remembered, with a slight shock, that that was Cain's cry.
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