Muriel showed no surprise. She sat down and looked at the poor little baby tossing disconsolately on its mother’s lap. “Isn’t he well?” she asked. “No, ’e ain’t,” said Liz more gently; “’e do take on somethink hawful in this ’eat. ’E cries all night, and Dick won’t come nigh ’im. I’d a been a deal better off without ’im, that’s what I’d a been. What’s the use o’ a ’usband who drinks all ’e earns? ’E don’t do _me_ no good, and I don’t do ’im no good—we’re better apart.” She looked at Muriel viciously in her increasing anger and fear, turning on the first object she met. “You’re very tired, Lizzie,” she said gently, “and very hot. Have you been sitting up all night with baby?” “I don’t keep no nurse!” “Poor little thing,” said Muriel, holding out her arms for it; “poor little dear.” “’E’ll crease your pretty skirt.” Muriel laughed. “Now, tell me,” she said, “what do you mean about Dick. Is he really taking to drink?” Lizzie forgot her resentment and poured out her troubles, and so again the woman in Muriel conquered. Yet she knew that there would be no gratitude for what she did. Lizzie only envied her—“her pretty frock.” She wrote to her uncle promising to go down the next day. Muriel arrived at Blacklands to be met by the footman and a carriage. The trappings of a luxury she had spurned seemed at present very grateful to her. They belonged, she realized, to a class of things one does not actually need, and yet seems to miss more than even the necessities. As she drove comfortably through the village she was possessed by a complete set of new faculties. All her old fund of light-hearted laughter sprang again within her; her quick, observant eyes (which she had used more lately to ignore than to observe) found beauties at every turn. She felt a desire to sketch two cottages half lost in honeysuckle planted with the most perfect effect of naturalness under the old tower of the ivy-covered church. The churchyard seemed the most perfectly restful thing she had ever seen. She longed to pick the hedge flowers; to let the wind blow about her hair, with no restraining erection to keep it in place; to walk barefoot across the cool, green fields; to hunt for birds’ nests in the wood; to climb the hills at sunset time—in short, a passion of longing to come near to Nature held her; to forget all the many inventions of the clever, brutal, unscrupulous mind of man; to be once, for however little time, one with the world as “God has made it.” She found herself taking off her gloves, and at that moment the carriage swept up the drive of a large old house, with an exterior too ancient to be quarrelled with, and an interior too full of the best of modern “improvements” to be in the least appropriate.