‘Hester has brought her to Rydal all right,’ she said cheerfully.

‘How is she?’

’As you might expect.  But Hester says she talks of nothing but going to work.  She has absolutely set her heart upon it, and there is no moving her.’

‘It is, of course, an absurdity,’ said Farrell, frowning.

’Absurdity or not, she means to do it, and Hester begs that nobody will try to persuade her against it.  She has promised Hester to stay with her for three weeks, and then she has already made her arrangements.’

‘What is she going to do?’

’She is going to a hospital near Manchester.  They want a V.A.D. housemaid.’

Farrell rose impatiently, and stretching out his hand for his pipe, began to pace the room, steeped evidently in disagreeable reflection.

’You know as well as I do’—­he said at last—­that she hasn’t the physical strength for it.’

’Well then she’ll break down, and we can put her to bed.  But try she will, and I entirely approve of it,’ said Cicely firmly.  ’Hard physical work—­till you drop—­till you’re so tired, you must go to sleep—­that’s the only thing when you’re as miserable as poor Nelly.  You know it is, Will.  Don’t you remember that poor Mrs. Henessy whose son died here?  Her letters to me afterwards used to be all about scrubbing.  If she could scrub from morning till night, she could just get along.  She scrubbed herself sane again.  The bigger the floor, the better she liked it.  When bedtime came, she just slept like a log.  And at last she got all right.  But it was touch-and-go when she left here.’

‘She was a powerfully-built woman,’ said Farrell gloomily.

’Oh, well, it isn’t always the strapping ones that come through.  Anyway, old boy, I’m afraid you can’t do anything to alter it.’

She looked at him a little askance.  It was perfectly understood between them that Cicely was more or less acquainted with her brother’s plight, and since her engagement to Marsworth had been announced it was astonishing how much more ready Farrell had been to confide in her, and she to be confided in.

But for her few days in France, however, with Nelly Sarratt, Marsworth might still have had some wrestles to go through with Cicely.  At the very moment when Farrell’s telephone message arrived, imploring her to take charge of Nelly on her journey, Cicely was engaged in fresh quarrelling with her long-suffering lover.  But the spectacle of Sarratt’s death, and Nelly’s agony, together with her own quick divination of Nelly’s inner mind, had worked profoundly on Cicely, and Marsworth had never shewn himself a better fellow than in his complete sympathy with her, and his eager pity for the Sarratts.  ’I haven’t the heart to tease him’—­Cicely had said candidly after her return to England.  ‘He’s been so horribly nice to me!’ And the Petruchio having once got the upper hand, the Katherine was—­like her prototype—­almost overdoing it.  The corduroy trousers, Russian boots, the flame-coloured jersey actually arrived.  Cicely looked at them wistfully and locked them up.  As to the extravagances that still remained, in hats, or skirts, or head-dressing, were they to be any further reduced, Marsworth would probably himself implore her not to be too suddenly reasonable.  For, without them, Cicely would be only half Cicely.