When Abner came into the house that evening he found the grate cold and full of ashes. He ran into the washhouse to fetch Tiger, but the dog was not there. Then he heard the voice of Mrs Moseley, distressed and quavering, calling him from above, and a minute later Tiger came scampering downstairs, thoroughly ashamed of himself, from his nest on Mrs Moseley’s bed. Abner, standing at the bottom of the stairs, listened to the story of her troubles. She wouldn’t tell him much about them, and nothing at all about the deeper fears that haunted her. She told him to get a cup of tea for himself, but when he suggested bringing another upstairs to her she was scandalised. Even though she was old enough to be his grandmother she thought that this would be indelicate; besides, she couldn’t be quite certain that the cleanliness of her bedroom was beyond reproach, and had determined that before any one visited her, leg or no leg, she must spend a day putting things straight. And of course the floor must be scrubbed with carbolic soap. She begged Abner to get her some from Mr Ingleby’s shop. Later, as the days of her imprisonment lengthened, she found that she couldn’t be so independent after all. At an immense sacrifice she consented to the presence of Abner in her room, that narrow, ill-lighted chamber which the bulging four-poster nearly filled, where, in fact, it was the only piece of furniture. Here Abner would sit in the hot evenings of summer, staring through the closed windows at the distant hills, while Mrs Moseley, in a tired, unhurried voice, talked of things that had happened in his childhood and other days, more remote, when his mother had been alive. The old woman had always been fond of Abner, always a little frightened of his father; and now that this tall youth was repaying her in some degree for the care that she had given him in his childhood, she became very tender toward him. At times his coming made her vaguely emotional, her tenderness helping her to realise how very lonely she was. Sometimes, when she heard his step in the room beneath her, she would very nearly cry, and the dog Tiger, lying on the patchwork quilt, would lick her outstretched arm. She began to count on his visits. Indeed, rather than lose him, she would even have consented to have the bedroom windows opened. He never spoke of his own accord about Alice, but Mrs Moseley compelled him to do so, inquiring every day how she was getting on. She had promised John Fellows, to whom she was always grateful for her old employment, that she would be in the house during the confinement, and to lend the doctor a hand. John Fellows remembered well what a tower of strength she had been at the time when Abner was born. In those days she had possessed a comfortable figure and a jolly laugh. ‘I don’t want her there!’ Alice had protested. ‘I’d rather have _anyone_ with me nor her!’