t her attitude
towards the Vicar was precisely his own. He took it for granted that
the Vicar's attitude was the same to both of them, based on a polite and
kindly but firm recognition that there could be no genuine sympathy
between him and them.

"The Vicar's just been," said Maggie.

"Has he? ... Cheered the old man up at all?"

"Not much." Maggie shook her head gloomily.

Edwin's conscience seemed to be getting ready to hint that he ought not
to go to London.

"I say, Mag," he said quietly, as he inserted his stick in the
umbrella-stand. She stopped on her way upstairs, and then approached
him.

"Mr Orgreave wants me to go to London with him and Mrs Orgreave." He
explained the whole project to her.

She said at once, eagerly and benevolently--

"Of course you ought to go. It'll do you all the good in the world. I
shall be all right here. Clara and Albert will come for Jubilee Day,
anyhow. But haven't you driven it late? ... The day after to-morrow,
isn't it? Mr Heve was only saying just now that the hotels were all
crammed."

"Well, you know what Orgreave is! I expect he'll look after all that."

"You go!" Maggie enjoined him.

"Won't upset him?" Edwin nodded vaguely to wherever Darius might be.

"Can't be helped if it does," she replied calmly.

"Well then, I'm dashed if I don't go! What about my collars?"

------------------------------------------------------------------------

THREE.

Those three--Darius, Maggie, and Edwin--sat down to tea in silence. The
window was open, and the weather very warm and gay. During the previous
twelve months they had sat down to hundreds of such meals. Save for a
few brief periods of cheerfulness, Darius had steadily grown more
taciturn, heavy and melancholy. In the winter he had of course
abandoned his attempts to divert himself by gardening--attempts at the
best half-hearted and feeble--and he had not resumed them in the spring.
Less than half a year previously he had often walked across the fields
to Hillport and back, or up the gradual slopes to the height of Toft
End--he never went townwards, had not once visited the Conservative
Club. But now he could not even be persuaded to leave the garden. An
old wicker arm-chair had been placed at the end of the garden, and he
would set out for that arm-chair as upon a journey, and, having reached
it, would sink into it with a huge sigh, and repose before bracing
himself to the effort of return.