At first he looked forward to these evenings with some anxiety, feeling that the presence of this silent and, as he thought, unsympathetic woman, would make him uncomfortable; but strangely enough this did not happen. The devotion of Gladys put him at his ease and occupied him so much that he did not have to speak to her mother. When first the fire was lighted Mary Malpas would move about the house on her own business. Abner would hear her talking softly to Morgan in the scullery while Gladys chattered to him in the flickering light that filled the room with moving shadows. Later, like a shadow herself, Mary would return with the boy and settle herself softly in the chair on the other side of the fire. Morgan would struggle up on to her knee and cuddle into his mother’s breast, and Gladys, not to be outdone, would climb on Abner’s knee and beg him to tell her stories. He knew no stories for children, for he had never had a mother to tell them to him, but he would talk to her about Mawne and the blind pit-ponies, about the rabbits that lived in Dovehouse fields, about Tiger and the excitements of the wakes with their galloping horses and soaring swing-boats. Gladys had never seen a fair and these descriptions fired her imagination most. ‘Why ain’t there no swing-boats here, mother?’ she would ask. ‘Because there aren’t enough children to go up in them. You’ll see them some day.’ ‘Abner’ll take me to see his; won’t you, Abner?’ By this time of the evening, Morgan, curled up on his mother’s lap, was usually as sleepy as Spider who lay like a hedgehog on the hearth between them. Mary sat there hugging the child in her arms and never speaking for fear that she might disturb him, and Gladys, impressed by the silence of the firelit room, would snuggle closer to Abner and talk to him in whispers that her mother could not hear. They sat on either side of the fire in these strangely divided camps, and Abner would become aware of the beauty and placidity of this silent woman sitting still in the gloom with firelight playing in her hair, listening all the time though she did not move, unless it were to touch with her lips the forehead of her sleeping child. He used to watch her and wonder what she was thinking. He could not help watching her as she sat like a statue staring at the fire. When she turned her eyes towards him he would look away. He became so used to her silent company that he could not have been happy without it.