Kit said he doubted she wouldn’t have troubled if she had, and sat back, staring vacantly at his plate. His face looked worn and white now that the expression of almost venomous hate had died away. Thomas, busily carving, heard the hate in his voice, and again was conscious of a little shock. Kit himself was as puzzled by his vehemence as his son was jarred. Never before had he even thought of Marget in the terms he had used to-day. His tongue, like the rest of his body, had been in jail, and was only now beginning to be loosed. Yet his look was not the look of a man who was brooding on the past. That savage face belonged to a man in an unknown place ... betrayed.... And then he was back in the past, away from Beautiful End, back in the cottage where Marget’s pails lay hoping for his feet. This one had lurked in secret on the stair, and he had come on it hoping, and hurtled into space. Afterwards he and the fiddle sat on the bottom step, shaking and crying together in their pain. Nobody came near them however long they cried, though once the face of a neighbour showed scared beyond the door. Presently he had climbed the stair and gone back again to his room—to dream of his home where pails were kept in place. It was strange that now he was home he should wander away, to shake and pant and cry on the bottom step. It was strange he should long for that room now he was here, wanting that wretchedness beyond this grace.... Marget was in the mind of the others, too, it seemed. “Bob said she was fit to scratch when they come away,” Thomas was busy relating to his wife. “He made sure there’d be a row in the street, but she thought better o’ that. All the same, there was a grand to-do aforehand, so he said!” “Jealous—that’s what it is!” Agnes answered with a toss of the head. She gave vent to a short laugh as well, and the laugh was a mixture of satisfaction and contempt. Kind as she was, and generous to a fault, she couldn’t help gloating over Marget to-day. She and Thomas were doing a beautiful thing, but little, sordid thoughts kept creeping in. Somewhere at the back of their minds they were gloating over Marget all the time. Of course she was bound to be jealous of their better luck—the unlovable woman with the wretched house. It must have irked her to see Kit driving off, knowing how glad he was to get away. She was bound to envy the bride with her pleasant home, her brand-new furniture and four-pronged forks. Those who sit in the sun are so sure of the envy of those in the shade. In any case, Marget could have nothing to offer that could possibly compare. Agnes’s nature was nearly all pure gold, but the bit of alloy that was in it sounded in that laugh. Besides, how could she feel anything but secure, glowing in secret over that room upstairs?