, exclaimed, "Yes, yes! Of course I know
you're not!" and gripped him by the arm and pulled him into the room. He
did not seem to resent the rough treatment at all, and went over at once
to the woman in uniform, and, looking happily about him, cried: "Isn't
this a lovely home? I always say there's nobody got such a nice home as
my mother."

His voice whistled; and Ellen in her mind's eye saw a vision of some
clumsy, half-bestial creature wandering in primeval swamps, feeling joy
and yet knowing no joyful word or song, and so plucking a reed and
breathing down it, and in his ignorance being pleased at the poor noise.
She felt pity and loathing, and looked across the room at Richard,
meaning to tell him by a smile that she would help him to be kind to
Roger. But Richard was still occupying himself with the window,
examining with an air of irascibility a stain of blood which his cut
finger had left on the white paint near the lock. His eyes travelled
from it to the muddy footprints of the two who had come in from the
garden and to the spatter of earth-daubed leaves on the polished floor,
and his mouth drew down at the corners in a grimace of passion that made
Ellen long to run to him and kiss him and bid him not give way to the
madness of order so prevalent in this house. But he did not even look at
her, so she could do nothing for him.

He went forward to Roger, determinedly sweetening his face, and shook
his hand heartily. "It's good that you should have turned up just at
this moment, for I'm going to be married before long to Miss Melville,
whom I met in Scotland when I was working at Aberfay. Ellen, this is my
brother, Roger."

Roger took Ellen's hand and then seemed to remember something. After
exchanging a portentous glance with the woman in uniform, he looked
steadfastly into her face and said sombrely: "I hope all's well with
you, sister! I hope all's well with you!"

"Pairfectly," answered Ellen; and after a pause added, shyly: "And I'm
pleased to meet you. I hope anyone that's dear to Richard will be
friends with me."

He flung his head backwards and cried, in that whistling voice: "Yes,
I'll be that! And I'm a friend worth having now I've got Jesus! And He's
given me Poppy too! Aha, old man!" With a little difficulty he put both
his thumbs inside the corked edge of his armholes and began to stride up
and down, taking steps unnaturally long for thin legs. "You aren't the
only man who's thought of getting ma