When she had prepared for Mr. Hancock's first afternoon patient Miriam sat down at her crowded table in a heavy drowse. No sound came from the house or from the den. The strip of sky above the blank wall opposite her window was an even cold grey. There was nothing to mark the movement of the noisy wind. The room was cold and stuffy. Shivering as she moved, she glanced round at the lamp. It was well trimmed. The yellow flame was at its broadest. The radiator glared. The warmth did not reach her. She was cold to the waist, her feet without feeling on the strip of linoleum; her knees protruding into the window space felt as if they were in cold water. Her arms crept and flushed with cold at every movement, strips of cold wrist disgusted her, showing beyond her skimpy sleeves and leading to the hopelessness of her purplish red hands swollen and clammy with cold. Her hot head and flushed cheeks begged for fresh air. Warm rooms, with carpets and fires; an even, airy warmth.... There were people who could be in this sort of cold and be active, with cool faces and warm hands, even just after lunch. If Mr. Leyton were here he would be briskly entering up the books--perhaps with a red nose; but very brisk. He was finishing Buck off; briskly, not even talking. Mr. Hancock would be working swiftly at well up-to-date accounts, without making a single mistake. Where had he sat doing all those pages of beautiful spidery book-keeping? Mr. Orly would be rushing things through. What a drama. He knew it. He _knew_ he had earned his rest by the fire ... doing everything, making and building the practice ... people waiting outside the surgery with basins for him to rush out and be sick. Her sweet inaccurate help in the fine pointed writing on cheap paper ... the two cheap rooms they started in.... The Wreck of the _Mary Gloucester_ ... "and never a doctor's brougham to help the missis unload." They had been through everything together ... it was all there with them now ... rushing down the street in the snow without an overcoat to get her the doctor. They were wise and sweet; in life and wise and sweet. They had gone out and would be back for tea. Perhaps they had gone out. Everything was so quiet. Two hours of cold before tea. Putting in order the materials for the gold and tin she propped her elbows on the table and rested her head against her hands and closed her eyes. There was a delicious drowsiness in her head but her back was tired. She rose and wandered through the deserted hall into the empty waiting room. The clear blaze of a coal fire greeted her at the doorway and her cold feet hurried in on to the warm Turkey carpet. The dark oak furniture and the copper bowls and jugs stood in a glow of comfort. From the centre of the great littered table a bowl of daffodils asserted the movement of the winter and pointed forward and away from the winter stillness of the old room. The long faded rich crimson rep curtains