She began to realise that, much as she had deplored what looked like his permanent satisfaction with a makeshift, she had found in it a kind of vicarious rest. When anxiety and disillusion lay like stones at the bottom of her heart, she had comforted herself with the thought of the lightness of his. Now she could do so no longer--she had the burden of his sorrow as well as her own to bear, and for a woman like Janey, this was bound much more than to double her load. Her anxiety about Nigel was also a pain that bruised through the weeks. He was decidedly "queer," and she could not understand his new craze for fiddling to children. Sometimes, too, he would be terribly sentimental, and have fits of more or less maudlin affection for her and Leonard. At other times he would be surly, and during his attacks of surliness he would work with desperation, almost with greed, as if he longed to wear himself out. Then he would come in, and throw himself down in a chair, and sleep the sleep of utter exhaustion with wide-flung limbs--or he would have a bath by the fire, regardless of any cooking operations she might have on hand, or the difficulty of heating gallons of ice-cold water in a not over-large kettle. Len would be furious with him on these occasions, and tell him that if he wanted a Turkish bath built on to Sparrow Hall he had better say so at once. "I hope we'll have a happy Christmas," remarked Janey rather plaintively to Len one evening late in December. "Why shouldn't we?" he asked; he was kneeling on the hearthstone, cleaning her boots. "Well, we've been counting on it so. You remember last Christmas, when I said that next time we'd have Nigel with us...." "And we've got him, haven't we?" "Yes." She was silent then, and the next minute he lifted his eyes from the blacking and laughed up at her. "There's the rub, Janey. We don't know how Nigel will take Christmas." "No--he'll probably be frightfully sentimental at breakfast, and kiss us both--and then he'll have a boiling bath--and then he'll take his fiddle and go out for hours to play to those wretched kids." "A pretty fair prophecy, I should think." "He's just like a kid himself," sighed Janey. "Yes--I think he's getting soft in that way. At any rate, he's taken an uncommon fancy to kids. By the bye, that girl he rescued at Grinstead station, Strife's girl, has come home for Christmas. I saw her out with her father this morning, and she'd got her hair up, and looked years older. I expect she'll be getting married soon. Her people will see that she settles down early--they don't want two like her sister." "What was that?" cried Janey. "What?" "I thought I heard some one in the room." "There's nobody--look, quite empty, except for you and me. You're getting nervy, old girl." "Perhaps I am." He stood up, and looked at her closely and rather anxiously. Then he put his arms round her.