th shame she liked it, while, mentally at first, and then physically,
she shrank from it. She dropped into the chair beside her, and with an
artifice of which she was no mistress, she yawned, laughed in apology,
and looked at him.

"I believe you were awake half the night," he grumbled. "I won't have
you tired. You shouldn't have sent the nurse away." He sat down and
pulled out his pipe, and filled it while he watched her. "But I'm glad
she's gone," he said softly.

She did not answer. She had a gripping hand on each arm of the chair:
she wanted to run away, and she hated George; she wanted to stay, and
then she hated herself.

"I shan't get tired," she said weakly. "Mrs. Samson stays till six
o'clock. I only look after Notya."

"And you sleep with her?"

"Yes," she said and, picking a spill of paper from the hearth, she
lighted it and held it out to him. He put his hand round hers and did
not let it go until his pipe was lit, and then he puffed thoughtfully
for a time.

"I've never been up your stairs except when I carried her to bed," he
said, and every muscle in her body contracted sharply. She flogged her
mind to start her tongue on a light word.

"Not--not when you were little? Before we came here?"

He laughed. "I wouldn't go near the place. We were all scared of old
Pinderwell. They used to say he walked. I was on the moor the night you
came, I remember, and saw the house all lighted up, and I ran home,
saying he'd set the place on fire. I was supposed to be in my bed, and I
had my ears well boxed."

"Who boxed them?"

"Mrs. Biggs, of course. She has hands like flails. I--What's the
matter?"

"Is she at the farm still?"

"Mrs. Biggs?"

"Yes."

"D'you want her to go?"

"I should have thought you did."

"Well--" He spoke awkwardly. "She's been there nearly all my life. You
can't turn people off like that, but if you want it, she shall go."

"No, it's not my affair," she told him.

"It will be," he said sharply.

"Of course," she said in a high voice, "I should never dream of living
in the same house with her, but then," she went on, and her tones
loosened, there was an irritating kind of humour in them, "I don't
suppose I shall ever live there at all."

She did not know why she spoke so; her wish to hurt him was hardly
recognizable by herself, but when she saw him stung, she was delighted.

The colour rushed up to his eyes. "What d'you mean by that? What d'you
think you're going to do?