At the door of the old kitchen Jim grasped his sister-in-law by the hand.

“Thot’s right,” he said.  “Yo’ve joost coom in time for a cup o’ tae.  T’ misses is in there wi’ t’ lil uns.”

He jerked his thumb toward his dining-room and led the way there.

Jim was not quite so alert and slender as he had been.  He had lost his savage grace.  But he moved with his old directness and dignity, and he still looked at you with his pathetic, mystic gaze.

Ally was contrite; she raised her face to her sister to be kissed.  “I can’t get up,” she said, “I’m feeding Baby.  He’d howl if I left off.”

“I’d let ’im howl.  I’d spank him ef ’twas me,” said Jim.

“He wouldn’t, Gwenda.”

“Ay, thot I would.  An’ ‘e knows it, doos Johnny, t’ yoong rascal.”

Gwenda kissed the four children; Jimmy, and Gwendolen Alice, and little Steven and the baby John.  They lifted little sticky faces and wiped them on Gwenda’s face, and the happy din went on.

Ally didn’t seem to mind it.  She had grown plump and pink and rather like Mary without her subtlety.  She sat smiling, tranquil among the cries of her offspring.

Jim turned three dogs out into the yard by way of discipline.  He and Ally tried to talk to each other across the tumult that remained.  Now and then Ally and the children talked to Gwenda.  They told her that the black and white cow had calved, and that the blue lupins had come up in the garden, that the old sow had died, that Jenny, the chintz cat, had kittened and that the lop-eared rabbit had a litter.

“And Baby’s got another tooth,” said Ally.

“I’m breaakin’ in t’ yoong chestnut,” said Jim.  “Poor Daasy’s gettin’ paasst ’er work.”

All these happenings were exciting and wonderful to Ally.

“But you’re not interested, Gwenda.”

“I am, darling, I am.”

She was.  Ally knew it but she wanted perpetual reassurance.

“But you never tell us anything.”

“There’s nothing to tell.  Nothing happens.”

“Oh, come,” said Ally, “how’s Papa?”

“Much the same except that he drove into Morfe yesterday to see Molly.”

“Yes, darling, of course you may.”

Ally was abstracted, for Gwenny had slipped from her chair and was whispering in her ear.

It never occurred to Ally to ask what Gwenda had been doing, or what she had been thinking of, or what she felt, or to listen to anything she had to say.

Her sister might just as well not have existed for all the interest Ally showed in her.  She hadn’t really forgotten what Gwenda had done for her, but she couldn’t go on thinking about it forever.  It was the sort of thing that wasn’t easy or agreeable to think about and Ally’s instinct of self-preservation urged her to turn from it.  She tended to forget it, as she tended to forget all dreadful things, such as her own terrors and her father’s illness and the noises Greatorex made when he was eating.