“Did he take his bottle well?” Mrs. Flanders whispered, and Rebecca nodded and went to the cot and turned down the quilt, and Mrs. Flanders bent over and looked anxiously at the baby, asleep, but frowning.  The window shook, and Rebecca stole like a cat and wedged it.

The two women murmured over the spirit-lamp, plotting the eternal conspiracy of hush and clean bottles while the wind raged and gave a sudden wrench at the cheap fastenings.

Both looked round at the cot.  Their lips were pursed.  Mrs. Flanders crossed over to the cot.

“Asleep?” whispered Rebecca, looking at the cot.

Mrs. Flanders nodded.

“Good-night, Rebecca,” Mrs. Flanders murmured, and Rebecca called her ma’m, though they were conspirators plotting the eternal conspiracy of hush and clean bottles.

Mrs. Flanders had left the lamp burning in the front room.  There were her spectacles, her sewing; and a letter with the Scarborough postmark.  She had not drawn the curtains either.

The light blazed out across the patch of grass; fell on the child’s green bucket with the gold line round it, and upon the aster which trembled violently beside it.  For the wind was tearing across the coast, hurling itself at the hills, and leaping, in sudden gusts, on top of its own back.  How it spread over the town in the hollow!  How the lights seemed to wink and quiver in its fury, lights in the harbour, lights in bedroom windows high up!  And rolling dark waves before it, it raced over the Atlantic, jerking the stars above the ships this way and that.

There was a click in the front sitting-room.  Mr. Pearce had extinguished the lamp.  The garden went out.  It was but a dark patch.  Every inch was rained upon.  Every blade of grass was bent by rain.  Eyelids would have been fastened down by the rain.  Lying on one’s back one would have seen nothing but muddle and confusion—­clouds turning and turning, and something yellow-tinted and sulphurous in the darkness.

The little boys in the front bedroom had thrown off their blankets and lay under the sheets.  It was hot; rather sticky and steamy.  Archer lay spread out, with one arm striking across the pillow.  He was flushed; and when the heavy curtain blew out a little he turned and half-opened his eyes.  The wind actually stirred the cloth on the chest of drawers, and let in a little light, so that the sharp edge of the chest of drawers was visible, running straight up, until a white shape bulged out; and a silver streak showed in the looking-glass.

In the other bed by the door Jacob lay asleep, fast asleep, profoundly unconscious.  The sheep’s jaw with the big yellow teeth in it lay at his feet.  He had kicked it against the iron bed-rail.

Outside the rain poured down more directly and powerfully as the wind fell in the early hours of the morning.  The aster was beaten to the earth.  The child’s bucket was half-full of rainwater; and the opal-shelled crab slowly circled round the bottom, trying with its weakly legs to climb the steep side; trying again and falling back, and trying again and again.