"Well, I've 'ad to shout at 'er once or twice," he said.

"And you MUST shout at her if she's not ready. She WILL leave things to
the last minute."

She gave him a few instructions. He sat looking at her as if she were
almost a stranger to him, before whom he was awkward and humble, and
also as if he had lost his presence of mind, and wanted to run. This
feeling that he wanted to run away, that he was on thorns to be gone
from so trying a situation, and yet must linger because it looked
better, made his presence so trying. He put up his eyebrows for misery,
and clenched his fists on his knees, feeling so awkward in presence of
big trouble.

Mrs. Morel did not change much. She stayed in Sheffield for two months.
If anything, at the end she was rather worse. But she wanted to go home.
Annie had her children. Mrs. Morel wanted to go home. So they got a
motor-car from Nottingham--for she was too ill to go by train--and she
was driven through the sunshine. It was just August; everything was
bright and warm. Under the blue sky they could all see she was dying.
Yet she was jollier than she had been for weeks. They all laughed and
talked.

"Annie," she exclaimed, "I saw a lizard dart on that rock!"

Her eyes were so quick; she was still so full of life.

Morel knew she was coming. He had the front door open. Everybody was on
tiptoe. Half the street turned out. They heard the sound of the great
motor-car. Mrs. Morel, smiling, drove home down the street.

"And just look at them all come out to see me!" she said. "But there,
I suppose I should have done the same. How do you do, Mrs. Mathews? How
are you, Mrs. Harrison?"

They none of them could hear, but they saw her smile and nod. And
they all saw death on her face, they said. It was a great event in the
street.

Morel wanted to carry her indoors, but he was too old. Arthur took her
as if she were a child. They had set her a big, deep chair by the
hearth where her rocking-chair used to stand. When she was unwrapped and
seated, and had drunk a little brandy, she looked round the room.

"Don't think I don't like your house, Annie," she said; "but it's nice
to be in my own home again."

And Morel answered huskily:

"It is, lass, it is."

And Minnie, the little quaint maid, said:

"An' we glad t' 'ave yer."

There was a lovely yellow ravel of sunflowers in the garden. She looked
out of the window.

"There are my sunflowers!" she said.

CHAPTER XIV

THE R