* * * * *

The three sisters waited without a word for the striking of the church clock.

XI

The church clock struck ten.

At the sound of the study bell Essy came into the dining-room.  Essy was the acolyte of Family Prayers.  Though a Wesleyan she could not shirk the appointed ceremonial.  It was Essy who took the Bible and Prayerbook from their place on the sideboard under the tea-urn and put them on the table, opening them where the Vicar had left a marker the night before.  It was Essy who drew back the Vicar’s chair from the table and set it ready for him.  It was Essy whom he relied on for responses that were responses and not mere mumblings and mutterings.  She was Wesleyan, the one faithful, the one devout person in his household.

To-night there was nothing but a mumbling and a muttering.  And that was Mary.  She was the only one who was joining in the Lord’s Prayer.

Essy had failed him.

* * * * *

Prayers over, there was nothing to sit up for.  All the same, it was Mr. Cartaret’s rule to go back into the study and to bore himself again for a whole hour till it was bed-time.  He liked to be sure that the doors were all bolted and that everybody else was in bed before he went himself.

But to-night he had bored himself so badly that the thought of his study was distasteful to him.  So he stayed where he was with his family.  He believed that he was doing this solely on his family’s account.  He told himself that it was not right that he should leave the three girls too much to themselves.  It did not occur to him that as long as he had had a wife to sit with, he hadn’t cared how much he had left them.  He knew that he had rather liked Mary and Gwendolen when they were little, and though he had found himself liking them less and less as they grew into their teens he had never troubled to enquire whose fault that was, so certain was he that it couldn’t be his.  Still less was it his fault if they were savage and inaccessible in their twenties.  Of course he didn’t mean that Mary was savage and inaccessible.  It was Gwendolen that he meant.

So, since he couldn’t sit there much longer without saying something, he presently addressed himself to Mary.

“Any news of Greatorex today?”

“I haven’t heard.  Shall I ask Essy?”

“No,” said Mr. Cartaret, so abruptly that Mary looked at him.

“He was worse yesterday,” said Gwenda.

They all looked at Gwenda.

“Who told you that?” said Mr. Cartaret by way of saying something.

“Mrs. Gale.”

“When did she tell you?”

“Yesterday, when I was up at the farm.”

“What were you doing at the farm?”

“Nothing.  I went to see if I could do anything.”  She said to herself, “Why does he go on at us like this?” Aloud she said, “It was time some of us went.”