Thomas laughed and said it was just as well she couldn’t hear, but the bitter disparagement gave him a slight shock. It had never been like his father to say bitter things. He had had a good word for every erring soul, a tolerant explanation for every doubtful deed. Marget must have been dreadful indeed to have altered him like that. The thought of his own share in the matter troubled Thomas’s heart. “Bob’s catched a Tartar,” he added, after a while. “He darsent call his soul his own, poor lad!” “Ay, she keeps folk stirring, Marget does,” Kit said, but after his little outburst he sat quiet. It was strange how Marget was present with him even here, so that he could not so much as open his mouth but she came jumping out. He tried to put her away from him as he watched Agnes moving about the hearth, all colour and curves and deft handling and neat ways. Agnes was flushed with the excitement of the occasion, and her eyes shone when she smiled. He could not remember that he had ever seen Marget smile except for the purpose of a sneer. She had never even smiled at the red-haired baby or Bob, and certainly not at the daft old man who was only a burden in the house. He liked a smiling face, but it embarrassed him as well, because he had forgotten what to do with people who smiled. That was why he shifted his eyes when Agnes looked his way, though he watched her again as soon as she left him alone. He liked her air of hurry without fuss, which filled the room with a vigour that did not fret. Marget would have spilt the kettle over the fender and one of the brats, and in the midst of the hissing and howling would have blamed himself. Somehow he could not picture Agnes ever spilling a drop. She brought the grand new tea-pot to be filled on the hearth, and the room was reflected in its polished side. Her blue gown, crossing and crossing the bars of gold, made him think of a coloured bird that kept flashing through the sun. From his window at Marget’s he had often watched the swifts darting and dipping in the evening light. The tiny whir of their wings across the pane had come to him in a series of little shocks. The long, pointed wings were like little slender swords, crossing and darting and never getting home. Now, if he looked from the farm-window, he would see the birds of the marsh, the long legs of the heron and the stately swing of the gull. The redshank and the curlew he would see lonely on the sands ... yet here he was busy thinking of Marget’s and the swifts.