assured Sophia, quite honestly, that she was not suffering; Sophia had been sceptical.  After that it was of course imperative that Constance should get up as usual.  She had said that she would get up as usual.  Besides, there was the immense enterprise of obtaining a new servant!  Worries loomed mountainous.  Suppose Cyril were dangerously ill, and unable to write!  Suppose something had happened to him!  Supposing she never did obtain a new servant!

Sophia, up in her room, was endeavouring to be philosophical, and to see the world brightly.  She was saying to herself that she must take Constance in hand, that what Constance lacked was energy, that Constance must be stirred out of her groove.  And in the cavernous kitchen Amy, preparing the nine-o’clock breakfast, was meditating upon the ingratitude of employers and wondering what the future held for her.  She had a widowed mother in the picturesque village of Sneyd, where the mortal and immortal welfare of every inhabitant was watched over by God’s vicegerent, the busy Countess of Chell; she possessed about two hundred pounds of her own; her mother for years had been begging Amy to share her home free of expense.  But nevertheless Amy’s mind was black with foreboding and vague dejection.  The house was a house of sorrow, and these three women, each solitary, the devotees of sorrow.  And the two dogs wandered disconsolate up and down, aware of the necessity for circumspection, never guessing that the highly peculiar state of the atmosphere had been brought about by nothing but a half-shut door and an incorrect tone.

As Sophia, fully dressed this time, was descending to breakfast, she heard Constance’s voice, feebly calling her, and found the convalescent still in bed.  The truth could not be concealed.  Constance was once more in great pain, and her moral condition was not favourable to fortitude.

“I wish you had told me, to begin with,” Sophia could not help saying, “then I should have known what to do.”

Constance did not defend herself by saying that the pain had only recurred since their first interview that morning.  She just wept.

“I’m very low!” she blubbered.

Sophia was surprised.  She felt that this was not ‘being a Baines.’

During the progress of that interminable April morning, her acquaintance with the possibilities of sciatica as an agent destructive of moral fibre was further increased.  Constance had no force at all to resist its activity.  The sweetness of her resignation seemed to melt into nullity.  She held to it that the doctor could do nothing for her.

About noon, when Sophia was moving anxiously around her, she suddenly screamed.

“I feel as if my leg was going to burst!” she cried.

That decided Sophia.  As soon as Constance was a little easier she went downstairs to Amy.

“Amy,” she said, “it’s a Doctor Stirling that your mistress has when she’s ill, isn’t it?”