She had him there.  She was always having him.

“I shall have to go myself tomorrow,” he said.

“I would if I were you,” said Gwenda.

“I wonder what Jim Greatorex will do if his father dies.”

It was Mary who wondered.

“He’ll get married, like a shot,” said Alice.

“Who to?” said Gwenda.  “He can’t marry all the girls——­”

She stopped herself.  Essy Gale was in the room.  Three months ago Essy had been a servant at the Farm where her mother worked once a fortnight.

She had come in so quietly that none of them had noticed her.  She brought a tray with a fresh glass of water for the Vicar and a glass of milk for Alice.  She put it down quietly and slipped out of the room without her customary “Anything more, Miss?” and “Good-night.”

“What’s the matter with Essy?” Gwenda said.

Nobody spoke but Alice who was saying that she didn’t want her milk.

More than a year ago Alice had been ordered milk for her anaemia.  She had milk at eleven, milk at her midday dinner, milk for supper, and milk last thing at night.  She did not like milk, but she liked being ordered it.  Generally she would sit and drink it, in the face of her family, pathetically, with little struggling gulps.  She took a half-voluptuous, half-vindictive pleasure in her anaemia.  She knew that it made her sisters sorry for her, and that it annoyed her father.

Now she declared that she wasn’t feeling well, and that she didn’t want her milk.

“In that case,” said Mr. Cartaret, “you had better go to bed.”

Alice went, raising her white arms and rubbing her eyes along the backs of her hands, like a child dropping with sleep.

One after another, they rose and followed her.

* * * * *

At the half-landing five steep steps in a recess of the wall led aside to the door of Essy’s bedroom.  There Gwenda stopped and listened.

A sound of stifled crying came from the room.  Gwenda went up to the door and knocked.

“Essy, are you in bed?”

A pause.  “Yes, miss.”

“What is it?  Are you ill?”

No answer.

“Is there anything wrong?”

A longer pause.  “I’ve got th’ faace-ache.”

“Oh, poor thing!  Can I do anything for you?”

“Naw, Miss Gwenda, thank yo.”

“Well, call me if I can.”

But somehow she knew that Essy wouldn’t call.

She went on, passing her father’s door at the stair head.  It was shut.  She could hear him moving heavily within the room.  On the other side of the landing was the room over the study that she shared with Alice.

The door stood wide.  Alice in her thin nightgown could be seen sitting by the open window.

The nightgown, the small, slender body showing through, the hair, platted for the night, in two pig-tails that hung forward, one over each small breast, the tired face between the parted hair made Alice look childlike and pathetic.