"It isn't the same thing. You haven't got to believe in the Burial Service. But either you believe in Prayers or you don't believe in them. If you don't you oughtn't to read them. You oughtn't to be asked to read them." "How are we going on, I should like to know? Supposing I was to be laid aside, are there to be no Prayers, ever, in this house because you've set yourself up in your silly self-conceit against the truth?" The truth. The truth about God. As if anybody really knew it; as if it mattered; as if anything mattered except Mamma. Yet it did matter. It mattered more than anything in the whole world, the truth about God, the truth about anything; just the truth. Papa's death had nothing to do with it. It wasn't fair of Mamma to talk as if it had; to bring it up against you like that. "Let's go to bed," she said. Her mother took no notice of the suggestion. She sat bolt upright in her chair; her face had lost its look of bored, weary patience; it flushed and flickered with resentment. "I shall send for Aunt Bella," she said. "Why Aunt Bella?" "Because I must have someone. Someone of my own." XIII. It was three weeks now since the funeral. Mamma and Aunt Bella sat in the dining-room, one on each side of the fireplace. Mamma looked strange and sunken and rather yellow in a widow's cap and a black knitted shawl, but Aunt Bella had turned herself into a large, comfortable sheep by means of a fleece of white shawl and an ice-wool hood peaked over her cap. There was a sweet, inky smell of black things dyed at Pullar's. Mary picked out the white threads and pretended to listen while Aunt Bella talked to Mamma in a woolly voice about Aunt Lavvy's friendship with the Unitarian minister, and Uncle Edward's lumbago, and the unreasonableness of the working classes. She thought how clever it was of Aunt Bella to be able to keep it up like that. "I couldn't do it to save my life. As long as I live I shall never be any good to Mamma." The dining-room looked like Mr. Metcalfe, the undertaker. Funereal hypocrisy. She wondered whether Roddy would see the likeness. She thought of Roddy's nervous laugh when Catty brought in the first Yorkshire cakes. His eyes had stared at her steadily as he bit into his piece. They had said: "You don't care. You don't care. If you really cared you couldn't eat." There were no more threads to pick. She wondered whether she would be thought unfeeling if she were to take a book and read. Aunt Bella began to talk about Roddy. Uncle Edward said Roddy ought to go away and get something to do. If Roddy went away there would be no one. No one. She got up suddenly and left them. XIV. The air of the drawing-room braced her like the rigour of a cold bath. Her heartache loosened and lost itself in the long shiver of chilled flesh. The stone walls were clammy with the sweat of the thaw; they gave out a sour, sickly smell. Grey smears of damp dulled the polished lid of the piano.