head was beginning to hurt again. Nothing but women all his life. Better to have died. Why didn’t the pain go away? What was the time? CHAPTER II HER, HIM, THEM “GOOD morning, mum.” “Grmn’, J’net.” And Janet, after putting the can of hot water in the basin behind the screen, went to the red curtains and pulled them back. The sunlight leapt, catching fire on her fuzzy hair, and the morning came freely in by the open windows. Mrs. Haye, in the right half of the double-bed, had such a lost look in the eyes which were usually so imperious that Janet shook her head sadly. She had had a bad night, the first since Portgammon over the fireplace there had fallen with her jumpin’ timber and had broken his back. She would get up immediately, it was no use stickin’ here in this ghastly bed. Pity she did not take her bath in the morning, a bath now would do her good. But there was more need for it in the evening. “Janet, I will get up and dress now.” “Now’m?” “Yes, now” Later: “Will you have the brown tweed or the green’m?” “The heather mixture. Janet, these stockings each have a hole in the heel. I wish you would not put me out stockings that are unfit to wear.” She was in one of her tempers to-day, and no wonder. But as the cook had said at supper last night, “No one to give notice till a year ’as passed by.” She was washing behind the screen, splashing and blowing. Then her teeth were being attacked. Work and forget, work and forget, till some plan emerged. She would send for Mabel Palmer and they would talk it out. She almost fell asleep while Janet was doing her hair. Diving upwards through the heather-mixture skirt, she said, “Tell William to ring up Mrs. Palmer, Norbury 27, you know, to ask her if she will come to tea to-day.” “Yes’m.” She struggled into the brown jumper and before the looking-glass put in the fox-head pin. There was old Pinch in the herbaceous border doing nothing already. She had never seen him about so early, it was really extraordinary. She looked a long time at Ralph in his photograph, but he was absolutely the same. His smile said nothing, gave her no advice, but only waited to be told what to do, just as he had been obeying the photographer then. He would have had more in common with the boy perhaps, would have been able to talk to him of pig-sticking out in India in the old 10th days. She could do nothing to distract him. But then he didn’t hunt, he didn’t shoot, he only fished and that sitting down, and he couldn’t fish now. Perhaps it was just as well he had given up huntin’ it would have been terrible had that been taken away from her suddenly.