The silence, breaking the children’s speech in half, held a sense of something thrown from a height and smashed. Something always died or was hurt when Marget entered a room. Kit had been too intent to heed her step, but now she was there before him, blocking his way. Where the presence with wings should have been he saw Marget instead, thin, pallid, slatternly, flaring-fringed and slit-eyed. Her tight lips sneered when she saw the old man on his feet, and her knuckles whitened as she gripped the rail. He looked very tall in the low room, and, with bundle and fiddle, very ready to be gone. This was a bitter moment for Marget that snatched her bone from between her teeth. She was ragingly jealous of those who wanted him for himself—wanted before they had tried him, Marget said. They couldn’t really be glad of a burden in the house; they were only pretending, to make other folks look small. She despised them for saddling themselves with the old man, and hated and mocked them because they did it with smiles. Also she hated Kit for his evident eagerness to go. “What d’ye think ye’re at?” she demanded, looking down at him from the stair. Her malignant face sneered at him out of the gloom, and her voice was full of sounds that troubled his delicate ear. He braced himself, as he always did when Marget spoke. Even when she looked at him he held himself ready for attack. “Trap’ll be round, waint it?” he asked, by way of reply. He leaned his hand on the table to steady himself, looking up. “I reckon trap’ll be round afore so long.” She glanced for a moment at his hand, finer, in spite of its age, than any in the house, and there came into her face that hatred of things unknown which had stirred her to fury when the baby danced. “Nay, then, it just waint!” she rapped out. “I told Bob he needn’t hurry himself, getting off. They won’t be looking for you yet. Marsh-folk is always a week behind everybody else.” “I’ll be glad to be off,” Kit said dully, with the mechanical patience he had learned at her hands. “I’m getting weary a bit, hanging about. I’d best be off.” “Ay, well,” she jibed at him, “you’ll have to bide. I don’t know as another hour or two in my house’ll do you any harm. You were glad enough on it once, when landlord skifted you out. And it’s as cheap sitting as standing, I reckon, even for folks as hasn’t the price of a seat. You’d best set down till it’s time for you to stir.”