A long way beneath something in the town was dropped with a clang, while a tug coming up the river whistled to get through the lock, a long shriek which shivered through the trees. Birds circled in specks round the Abbey tower. There was no wind and on the hill smoke from a cottage fire drifted straight up towards the blue sky, for the sun was shining. Just in front, in the meadow by the edge of the wood, a rabbit was feeding quietly, trembling at being alive. And they sat together against a tree, he with his head on one side to catch what was going on, and she dozing, with the world drifting in and out of her mind. “I hate this easy life with the millions toiling there.” “I don’t find it easy.” “No, I suppose not. But I will do something, even if I am blind.” She pulled a wisp of hair away from her face and rearranged the ragged scarf about her neck. “I expect you will, John.” “Do you think so?” “Yes, I do.” A confused shouting came from the lock, into which the barges were being packed. Several dogs were barking at each other while men ran about. The rabbit sat up and listened. “John, there’s a darling rabbit out there,” and the rabbit fled. “Oh?” “He’s gone now.” “Oh?” And they were silent. From the other side of the wood a ploughman cried to his horses. Then from in front came a rattling of machinery and the lock gates creaked, painfully slow. “Why are you so silent to-day, John?” “I must go, I must go away.” “What do you mean, away from here?” “No, to the towns.” “Yes, I know. You do want to get off sometimes. So do I. Minnie is getting very tiresome, he’s been making messes all over the house, an’ father does hate messes. I really don’t know what to do.” “What is Minnie?” “Our cat.” “Why do you give him a female name?” “I don’t know. Father always calls him she. Father hates cats.” She had told him this before. “An’ Father’s so nervy nowadays, you don’t know what to do with him. It gets harder and harder to live there at all. Father spends so much money on--on small things we don’t need. There often isn’t enough to eat an’ ...” He heard a train snort in the distance like a dragon, and the wood round reared itself in tall crowding shapes and dark images. A voice droned complaint and he saw a little figure at the foot of an image throwing words at the things which hemmed her in. “... but he doesn’t care, he never thinks of me, it’s me who has always to be thinking of him, how to keep him alive, how to keep the home round his head, how to manage so’s he won’t starve. Always thinking of him, I am, and he with never a thought to me.” “Poor June.” “Yes, it is poor June. You don’t know what it is with your easy life down there. There’s times when you don’t know if your own life’s safe when the fit is on him, he’s so dangerous.” “June, he doesn’t attack you?” “Attack me? If you could see my--the bruises on my arm, you simply wouldn’t believe. And he was brought to it.” “I must go away.” “It wasn’t his fault.”