Oh! I don't suppose it's anything, really."

II

That George should collect the tea-things together on the tray, and
brush and fold the cloth, and carry the loaded tray downstairs into the
scullery, was sufficiently strange. But it was very much more strange
that he should have actually had the idea of washing-up the tea-things
himself. In his time, in the domestic crises of Bursley, he had boyishly
helped ladies to wash-up, and he reckoned that he knew all about the
operation. There he stood, between the kitchen and the scullery,
elegantly attired, with an inquiring eye upon the kettle of warm water
on the stove, debating whether he should make the decisive gesture of
emptying the kettle into the large tin receptacle that lay on the
slop-stone. Such was the miraculous effect on him of Mrs. Haim's
simplicity, her weakness, and her predicament. Mrs. Haim was a different
woman for him now that he had carried her upstairs and laid her all limp
and girlish on the solemn conjugal bed! He felt quite sure that old Haim
was incapable of washing-up. He assuredly did not want to be caught in
the act of washing-up, but he did want to be able to say in his
elaborately nonchalant manner, answering a question about the
disappearance of the tea-things: "I thought I might as well wash-up
while I was about it." And he did want Mrs. Haim to be put in a flutter
by the news that Mr. George Cannon had washed-up for her. The affair
would positively cause a sensation.

He was about to begin, taking the risks of premature discovery, when he
heard a noise above. It was Mr. Haim at last descending the stairs to
the ground floor. George started. He had been alone in the lower parts
of the house for a period which seemed long. (Mr. Prince had gone to the
studio, promising to return later.) The bedroom containing Mr. and Mrs.
Haim had become for him the abode of mystery. The entity of the
enchanted house had laid hold of his imagination. He had thought of
Marguerite as she used to pervade the house, and of his approaching
interview with her at the Manresa Road studio. He had thought very
benevolently of Marguerite and also of, Mr. and Mrs. Haim. He had
involved them all three, in his mind, in a net of peace and goodwill. He
saw the family quarrel as something inevitable, touching, absurd--the
work of a maleficent destiny which he might somehow undo and exorcise
by the magic act of washing-up, to be followed by other acts of a more
diplomatic