"It wasn't. She didn't know. Mamma never knows anything she doesn't want to know. She can't see that he's ill now. She talks as if he ought to do something. She can't stand men who don't do things like Mark and Dan." "What on earth does she suppose he could do? He's no more fit to do anything than my brother James.... You'll have to take care of him, Mary." A sharp and tender pang went through her. It was like desire; like the feeling you had when you thought of babies: painful and at the same time delicious. "Could you?" said Dr. Charles. "Of course I can." "If he's taken care of he might live--" She stood up and faced him. "How long?" "I don't know. Perhaps--" He went with her to the door. "Perhaps," he said, "quite a long time." (But if he didn't live she would have killed him. She had known all the time, and she had let him go.) Through the dining-room window she could see Roddy as he crouched over the hearth, holding out his hands to the fire. He was hers, not Mamma's, to take care of. Sharp, delicious pain! VII. "Oh, Roddy--look! Little, little grouse, making nice noises." The nestlings went flapping and stumbling through the roots of the heather. Roddy gazed at them with his fixed and mournful eyes. He couldn't share your excitement. He drew back his shoulders, bracing himself to bear it; his lips tightened in a hard, bleak grin. He grinned at the absurdity of your supposing that he could be interested in anything any more. Roddy's beautiful face was bleached and sharpened; the sallow, mauve-tinted skin stretched close over the bone; but below the edge of his cap you could see the fine spring of his head from his neck, like the spring of Mark's head. They were in April now. He was getting better. He could walk up the lower slopes of Karva without panting. "Why are we ever out?" he said. "Supposing we went home?" "All right. Let's." He was like that. When he was in the house he wanted to be on the moor; when he was on the moor he wanted to be back in the house. They started to go home, and he turned again towards Karva. They went on till they came to the round pit sunk below the track. They rested there, sitting on the stones at the bottom of the pit. "Mary," he said, "I can't stay here. I shall have to go back. To Canada, I mean." "You shall never go back to Canada," she said. "I must. Not to the Aldersons. I can't go there again, because--I can't tell you why. But if I could I wouldn't. I was no good there. They let you know it." "Jem?" "No. _He_ was all right. That beastly woman." "What woman?" "His aunt. She didn't want me there. I wasn't fit for anything but driving cattle and cleaning out their stinking pigsties.... She used to look at me when I was eating. You could see she was thinking 'He isn't worth his keep.' ... Her mouth had black teeth in it, with horrible gummy gaps between. The women were like that. I wanted to hit her on the mouth and smash her teeth.... But of course I couldn't."