When he had gone she called after him.

“Don’t forget to tell Colin about the lamb.”

She went upstairs and slipped off her farm clothes and put on the brown-silk frock she had worn when he last came to her.  She looked in the glass and was glad that she was beautiful.

iv

She began to count the minutes and the hours till Jerrold came.  Dinner time passed.

All afternoon she was restless and excited.  She wandered from room to room, as if she were looking for something she couldn’t find.  She went to and fro between the dining-room and kitchen to see how the lamb was getting on.  Wrapped in its blanket, it lay asleep after its meal of milk.  Its body was warm to the touch and under its soft ribs she could feel the beating of its heart.  It would live.

Two o’clock.  She took up the novel she had been reading before Jerrold had come and tried to get back into it.  Ten minutes passed.  She had read through three pages without taking in a word.  Her mind went back and back to Jerrold, to the morning of today, to the evening of last Sunday, going over and over the things they had said to each other; seeing Jerrold again, with every movement, every gesture, the sudden shining and darkening of his eyes, and his tense drawn look of pain.  How she must have hurt him!

It was his looking at her like that, as if she had hurt him—­Anne never could hold out against other people’s unhappiness.

Half past two.

She kicked off her shoes, put on her thick boots and her coat, and walked two miles up the road towards Medlicote, for no reason but that she couldn’t sit still.  It was not four o’clock when she got back.  She went into the kitchen and looked at the lamb again.

She thought:  Supposing Colin comes down to see it when Jerrold’s here?  But he wouldn’t come.  Jerrold would take care of that.  Or supposing the Kimbers stayed in?  They wouldn’t.  They never did.  And if they did, why not?  Why shouldn’t Jerrold come to see her?

Four o’clock struck.  She had the fire lit in the big upstairs sitting-room.  Tea was brought to her there.  Mrs. Kimber glanced at her where she lay back on the couch, her hands hanging loose in her lap.

“You’re tired after all your week’s work, miss?”

“A little.”

“And I dare say you miss Mr. Colin?”

“Yes, I miss him very much.”

“No doubt he’ll be coming down to see the lamb.”

“Oh yes; he’ll want to see the lamb.”

“And you’re sure you don’t mind me and Kimber going out, miss?”

“Not a bit.  I like you to go.”

“It’s a wonder to me,” said Mrs. Kimber, “as you’re not afraid to be left alone in this ’ere house.  But Kimber says, Miss Anne, she isn’t afraid of nothing.  And I don’t suppose you are, what with going out to the war and all.”

“There’s not much to be afraid of here.”

“That there isn’t.  Not unless ’tis people’s nasty tongues.”