ad left it, and when Caroline saw the piece of meat and the
cold tart and bread so neatly arranged for her by those hands so long
unaccustomed to manual labour, she felt her lips begin to tremble. It
was hard. Poor Miss Ethel! Poor Miss Ethel! If only she had
remembered to empty that pail! If only---- And all at once she was
seized by a passion of weeping which she could neither stop nor
control. But it was not really for Miss Ethel--it was for that,
terrible blow to her love and pride which came before.

Then Miss Panton came into the kitchen with a hot-water bottle; so
Caroline sprang up, choking back her sobs. "Here, let me fill that,
Miss Panton!" As she went to the fireplace where there was a kettle
boiling, she added in a low voice: "How is Miss Ethel now?"

"The doctor says she is unconscious," answered Miss Panton, also
speaking in the unnatural voice which people use at such a time. "It
was a blessing the man happened to be laying sods where the privet
hedge used to be, or I don't know what Mrs. Bradford would have done.
She ran out to him, and he fetched the woman who lives in that new
house over the hedge. It seems she was a trained nurse before she
married."

"I hope Miss Ethel didn't know. She hated that house being built,"
said Caroline.

"I don't think she knew; but it wouldn't have mattered to her, poor
dear," said Miss Panton. "I suppose that's why it is so dreadful to
feel that nothing matters--it always has a taste of death." She spoke
from the deeps of her own experience, wise with what she had lived
through; but the next second she turned uncertain again and thrust
forth one of her copy-book maxims. "Yes, yes. Decessity makes strange
bed-fellows."

Caroline fastened the hot-water bag. "I'll run upstairs with this,"
she said. "Then I shall see if there is anything else I can do."

"I am afraid there is dothing anyone can do," said Miss Panton, for her
catarrh had come back with her nervous self-consciousness.

Mrs. Bradford came slowly downstairs into the hall, her big face
congested with weeping. "Oh, Caroline!" she said.

But she could not say any more, and walked on into the sitting-room
where the Vicar was already seated.

"Oh, Vicar: I'm afraid you are too late," she said, and began to weep
afresh. "It's so dreadfully, dreadfully sudden."

"I came the moment Mr. Wilson told me. I chanced to be in the house,"
said the Vicar. He paused. "I wouldn't trouble too mu