“What day of the month is it?”

“The thirtieth.”  Mary answered.

“Then we’ve been here exactly five months to-day.”

“That’s nothing,” said Mary, “to the months and years we shall be here.”

“I can’t think what possessed Papa to come and bury us all in this rotten place.”

“Can’t you?” Mary’s eyes turned from their brooding.  Her voice was very quiet, barely perceptible the significant stress.

“Oh, if you mean it’s me he wants to bury——.  You needn’t rub that in.”

“I’m not rubbing it in.”

“You are.  You’re rubbing it in every time you look like that.  That’s the beastly part of it.  Supposing he does want to get back on me, why should he go and punish you two?”

“If he thinks he’s punishing me he’s sold,” said Gwenda.

“He couldn’t have stuck you in a rottener hole.”

Gwenda raised her head.

“A hole?  Why, there’s no end to it.  You can go for miles and miles without meeting anybody, unless some darling mountain sheep gets up and looks at you.  It’s—­it’s a divine place, Ally.”

“Wait till you’ve been another five months in it.  You’ll be as sick as I am.”

“I don’t think so.  You haven’t seen the moon get up over Greffington Edge.  If you had—­if you knew what this place was like, you wouldn’t lie there grizzling.  You wouldn’t talk about punishing.  You’d wonder what you’d done to be allowed to look at it—­to live in it a day.  Of course I’m not going to let on to Papa that I’m in love with it.”

Mary smiled again.

“It’s all very well for you,” she said.  “As long as you’ve got a moor to walk on you’re all right.”

“Yes.  I’m all right,” Gwenda said.

Her head had sunk again and rested in the hollow of her arms.  Her voice, muffled in her sleeve, came soft and thick.  It died for drowsiness.

In the extreme immobility and stillness of the three the still house stirred and became audible to them, as if it breathed.  They heard the delicate fall of the ashes on the hearth, and the flame of the lamp jerking as the oil sputtered in the burnt wick.  Their nerves shook to the creeping, crackling sounds that came from the wainscot, infinitely minute.  A tongue of fire shot hissing from the coal.  It seemed to them a violent and terrifying thing.  The breath of the house passed over them in thick smells of earth and must, as the fire’s heat sucked at its damp.

The church clock struck the half hour.  Once, twice; two dolorous notes that beat on the still house and died.

Somewhere out at the back a door opened and shut, and it was as if the house drew in its breath at the shock of the sound.

Presently a tremor crept through Gwenda’s young body as her heart shook it.

She rose and went to the window.

IV

She was slow and rapt in her going like one walking in her sleep, moved by some impulse profounder than her sleep.