She stood close to the wall, her wet shoulder pressing the thick branches of the vine, all black and damp and with loose rough bark. There were busy movements inside in both the kitchens, a subdued cluttering of feet, a comforting rattle of china. The warmth and smell of the fire puffed out. There was a band of amber light, shaming the cold moon. It fell across the pig-tub and the ash-heap, running straight from the open door and losing itself in the hedge, which was being grubbed. Jethro was evidently in the grip of some frenzy of renewal and refurbishing. The voices came from the kitchen. One was the voice of Nettie, that girl Edred used to kiss and squeeze on the sly in his hateful animal way. There were a couple of strange voices. The predominant smell was that of apples bubbling in sugar. And then at last, as she stood shrinking by the wall and undecided what to do, she heard Gainah’s voice. It said, in the old acid shrew’s tone: “I’ll have ’em made int’n apple-stucklin.” She curled her lip, remembering those stodgy apple-pasties of Gainah’s which Jethro had eaten with such relish. If they were still eating apple-stucklins--such a name!--the improvements were only external after all. Gainah’s voice, Gainah’s charge to the new cook, gave her courage. Jethro had not yet taken a wife; no young wife would endure Gainah’s rule. He hadn’t a wife. She would walk straight into the house; the garden-door was always unbolted until well after dusk. She would go into the house through the garden-door and walk through the dining-room. If he were not there she would look into his little room, where he kept papers, guns, his boots, his bicycle even, when he chose. It was a new surprise to find herself in a porch--so the dining-room no longer opened direct into the garden! That was another improvement. She went through the porch into the room itself. She stopped on the threshold and cried out faintly. Everything was changed. The yawning hearth was filled in, and a coal fire was burning in a grate of the latest design. There was a square table in the middle of the room, in place of the long narrow one, with the stout legs and the thick staves, which she had always considered so rude, so uncouth. It was pushed against the wall opposite the new door--the table beneath which so many dead and gone Jaynes had slept off their liquor, the table whose top was ringed with black, ring within ring, each the mark of a wet mug, each telling the tale of some dead joviality. She had always declared that it was only fit for a public-house. It stood against the wall, its disreputable ringed top discreetly covered with a cloth. They used it as a side-board. There was a filter set out, a soda-water syphon, and various other things.