Hester Martin surveyed her thoughtfully.

‘I wouldn’t do war-work all day, if I were you,’ she said at last.  ’Why don’t you go on with your sketching?’

’I was going to try this very afternoon.  Sir William said he would give me a lesson,’ was the listless reply.

‘He’s coming here?’

‘He said he would be walking this way, if it was fine,’ said Nelly, indifferently.

Both relapsed into silence.  Then Miss Martin enquired after Bridget.  The face beside her darkened a little.

’She’s very well.  She knows about the telegram.  She thought I was a great goose to be so anxious.  She’s making an index now—­for the book!’

‘The psychology book?’

‘Yes!’ A pause—­then Nelly looked round, flushing.

’I can’t talk to Bridget you see—­about George—­or the war.  She just thinks the world’s mad—­that it’s six to one and half a dozen to the other—­that it doesn’t matter at all who wins—­so long of course as the Germans don’t come here.  And as for me, if I was so foolish as to marry a soldier in the middle of the war, why I must just take the consequences—­grin and bear it!’

Her tone and look showed that in her clinging way she had begun to claim the woman beside her as a special friend, while Hester Martin’s manner towards her bore witness that the claim excited a warm response—­that intimacy and affection had advanced rapidly since George Sarratt’s departure.

‘Why do you put up with it?’ said Miss Martin, sharply.  ’Couldn’t you get some cousin—­some friend to stay with you?’

Nelly shook her head.  ’George wanted me to.  But I told him I couldn’t.  It would mean a quarrel.  I could never quarrel with Bridget.’

Miss Martin laughed indignantly.  ‘Why not—­if she makes you miserable?’

’I don’t know.  I suppose I’m afraid of her.  And besides’—­the words came reluctantly—­:  ’she does a lot for me.  I ought to be very grateful!’

Yes, Hester Martin did know that, in a sense, Bridget did ‘a lot’ for her younger sisters.  It was not many weeks since she had made their acquaintance, but there had been time for her to see how curiously dependent young Mrs. Sarratt was on Miss Cookson.  There was no real sympathy between them; nor could Miss Martin believe that there was ever much sense of kinship.  But whenever there was anything to be done involving any friction with the outside world, Bridget was ready to do it, while Nelly invariably shrank from it.

For instance, some rather troublesome legal business connected with Nelly’s marriage, and the reinvestment of a small sum of money, had descended on the young wife almost immediately after George’s departure.  She could hardly bring herself to look at the letter.  What did it matter?  Let their trustee settle it.  To be worrying about it seemed to be somehow taking her mind from George—­to be breaking in on that imaginative vision of him, and his life