The woman, at any rate, had work for anodyne. By now, Patricia began to realize that country life on a moderate income is not the simple paradise which town dwellers imagine it. She was not yet fully aware of the robberies practised on her; but she had learned, at least, the necessity of personal supervision. Children, house, servants, garden, animals—all needed her. The man Fry, grown arrogant on the proceeds of speculation (he had utilized her absence to dispose of the apple-crop to a confederate—and the two were now holding forty bushels of pippins for the ultimate rise) turned lazy, insubordinate; required constant prodding. Fanny and Elizabeth—half-trained, utterly uneducated, liars by inheritance of serfdom—could not be trusted to work unwatched. Also, accounts had begun to roll in. None of these inevitable pettinesses would have been a burden, if she could have laughed over them with Peter. But household affairs had always been taboo between them: her job and hers only. They had made that rule in the prosperity of three thousand a year; and she was not the type of woman to break it in the adversity of six hundred. Moreover, intuition warned her that he must, for the present, be shielded from financial anxieties. Peter, who had no work for anodyne and cherished all the prejudices of the caste which is not accustomed to see its womenfolk labour, watched her busied about the house, feeding her chickens, educating the children, till the Fear of Poverty wiped out all other fears and he said to himself: “This is the way my clerks used to live. I’ve brought her to this. I shall bring her to worse than this. . . .” Then he would take his twelve-bore from the case in his dressing-room, drop a couple of No. 5’s into the breech, and slip through Tebbits’ Farm, down the hill to Francis Gordon’s cottage. “Why the devil do you always bring that gun of yours?” Francis used to ask. “Might see a rabbit.” Invariably Peter gave the same answer to his cousin’s question; invariably he felt shamed by it. For the real reason of that gun-carrying was Fear, the Fear of Open Spaces. And when Peter used to ask, “Done any work, old man?” Francis would answer, “Oh, I’m just lying fallow for a bit.” For Francis Gordon had passed beyond the Fears into the land of No-Incentive. § 2 Heron Baynet arrived at Sunflowers on Christmas Eve. Nothing about the house suggested tragedy: the hedges were clipped, the ground dug; holly decked the hall; above the oak dining-table hung a bunch of mistletoe; Peter’s study had been cleared for the children’s tree and presents. The day itself brought its usual gift-giving, its usual church-going, the usual roast-beef for lunch, the usual turkey, the usual champagne—and Francis Gordon who hobbled through Tebbits’ cowyard in full evening-kit and a fur-coat—for dinner.