The Stranger's return was a landmark.

First of all there was a vivid addition to my stock of rehearsable memories. Second, there was the interest of my new accomplishments.

I went for my music lessons to one Monsieur Petrowski, a Polish refugee, who had just fled from his native land and was settling down in Tawborough. I made great progress with my music, and if he gave me a goodly share of scales and studies beyond the needs of discipline he had for plea the direct instruction of Aunt Jael. Now that her time-honoured boast "I pay for the child's music" was crumbling about her ears she solaced herself by instructing Monsieur Petrowski very plainly.

"Now not too much fine showy music."

"Very well, Mademoiselle."

"No infidel trash."

"?" A slight bow, vaguely affirmative.

"Always plenty of what she doesn't like": Aunt Jael's ideal of education. "Make it a task, sir, make it a task. Plenty of scales, chromatics, or whatever 'tis."

"Very well, Mademoiselle."

Monsieur Petrowski obeyed reasonably well, but he forgot to break my will, and I suspect much of the music I learned of open infidelity. My talent and taste developed, and by eighteen years of age I played the piano better than (say) ninety-five embryo governesses out of a hundred. I loved Chopin best.

With French I made equal progress. Here again Aunt Jael appointed herself the intermediary of the Stranger's bounty. She selected to instruct me Miss le Mesurier. This lady was half French by parentage, had lived abroad the best part of her life, and had now come back to spend her declining old-maidhood in her native town, and keep house for her bachelor brother Doctor le Mesurier,—the same who had attended my mother when I was born. She became a regular member of our Meeting. Aunt Jael's instructions were explicit. "Make the work a task, a trial, a tribulation. Pander not to her pleasure loving tastes. No romances for her study, no trash, no infidel works." These restrictions, gladly acquiesced in by my teacher (who about this time followed my example and took up her Cross in public) cut out all fiction, plays and poetry; leaving us with the devotional writings of French Protestants, and history; the former of an epic dullness, the latter an imperishable fountain of excitement and romance. We read a Monsieur Michelet's History of the Revolution. My appetite for history grew as it was fed.

For my third accomplishment, my instructor was neither Pole nor French, but red-faced broad-breeched Mr. Samuel Prickett of Prickett's "Mews" (sic). In this quarter even Aunt Jael jibbed at bestowing admonitions, nor were they needed. It was a trial and tribulation for me after her heart. No sooner did I approach the fragrant riding-school and behold the feats I should have to emulate than I found myself in a shocking condition of fear, while for the first few minutes in the saddle I was verily purged with terror—in the good (and accurate) old Bible sense of the word. I would hunch my back, my limbs would grow rigid with funk, and when Mr. Samuel Prickett for the first time tickled Rose Queen into the gentlest of trots I clung with frenzy to the scanty mane of that poor mare. The first time she galloped I screamed aloud, rolled incontinently out of the saddle, and clung for dear life to her neck. Every Tuesday and Friday I approached the mews with set teeth and inward prayer for courage, with a supreme "Help me O God!" as I put my foot into the stirrup; after a year or two of prayer and perseverance I was a fair if never a fearless horsewoman. (Even at the beginning there was this set-off to fear: pride.) I knew that my riding-habit became me; if a few of the bolder spirits on the Lawn mocked and jeered, I inwardly mocked and jeered back because I knew that really they were impressed: their sneers were but a natural tribute to their jealousy of me and respect for themselves. More than the costume, the fact of riding gave me a delicious sense of importance. It may be argued that the connection between horsemanship and aristocracy is merely the result of distant historical origins, far-away reflection of a world where the knight alone went horseback and the common man trudged humbly through the centuries. All I am sure of is this: that in the country lanes I felt myself a very fine young lady, i. e. at such moments as I did not feel a shocking coward. In the middle of pleasant reviews as to the lordliness of riding a horse, I would be seized with a pained and concentrated interest in my reins, a perspiring anxiety not to lose the stirrups, a most unaristocratic readiness to snatch the mane. (Pride qualified by fear: man's natural state.)

The aim of all these proceedings was to obtain, by the Stranger's help, a governess' post in a good family. Meagre and melancholy ambition this would seem to worldly spirits nowadays. To me the prospect was fame, freedom, adventure, la Vie!

Lord Tawborough I rarely saw. Grandmother stood out against Aunt Jael in refusing to let me stay at Woolthy Hall. I wrote him a report of progress every three months, a soulless jellyfish document, heavily censored by both Grandmother and Great-Aunt. The former always said I was not grateful enough, the latter that I was not humble enough. The final product was an unpleasing mixture of grovelling gratitude, hateful humility, and perfect grammar. My Grandmother persisted in her old plan of keeping me meek and lowly by never speaking well of me to my face, nor allowing any word of praise to escape her lips, yet I know she was proud of such progress as I made alike in these special pursuits and at the Misses Primps'. I read often in her eyes how deeply she felt it that I had not chosen the Better Way, and I realized how unselfish was her interest in my progress.

I began to appreciate my Grandmother's unselfishness at its true worth. In it lay all her charm, her goodness, her difference from other people. It was through her that I first came to see that unselfishness is the one virtue, as it was Aunt Jael who helped to teach me that selfishness is the one vice. I would think out every evil act I could imagine and find that at bottom it was Self. I would think out every good deed and discover that its essence was always unselfishness. In one of those flashes in which I saw and felt things I had before only vaguely believed, I grasped the meaning of the Cross. I saw suddenly how utterly selfish I was myself, full of hopes for myself, weaving futures for myself; always self, self, self; and a voice inside me asked: "Now what hopes has Grandmother for herself?" and though I was alone I coloured at the sudden discovery of self-accused shame. "She has nothing; the one great hope left to her was you, and you have disappointed her." I began to understand the sorrow and loneliness of an old woman's lot, the vacancy, the lack of hope and lookings-forward. No doubt when Grandmother had been a little girl she too had said to herself: "Wait, Hannah, wait till you're grown up; then things will be happier. Wait for love, marriage; then you will be happy." Married love faded, husband died. "There are your children." But the children went away; Christian into a consumptive's grave, Martha unhappily wed, Rachel slowly tortured to death. Hope still ahead: "You will find comfort in your children's children." What comfort did they hold for her: Albert!—and Mary who had betrayed the last great hope. What had my Grandmother to live for? The daily round of Aunt Jael's nagging: old age with sorrow behind and only Heaven ahead.

Aunt Jael, I reflected, had been denied even the pleasures of sorrow, the regret for good things gone away; neither love, nor husband, nor children. Should I have been better in her case? Perhaps there were excuses for Aunt Jael.

I had to say this to myself very hard and very often in these days. As my Great-Aunt grew older she grew noisier, more evil-tempered, more shrewish; her evil and domineering nature was having a final bout before the ebb tide of a maudlin dotage. As I remember her during my sixteenth and seventeenth years she well nigh baffles description. A hooked-nose wicked old witch, scolding, snarling, imprecating, hurling texts and threats about her. She would sit back in her old armchair and nag and shout from morn till eve, cursing my Grandmother for an idle selfish ingrate if not always at her beck and call to button or unbutton her boots, to dress or undress her, to help her up- or downstairs. "Why shouldn't she do a bit for me, that's what I want to know? Hannah is younger, Hannah is sprightlier, not an old woman like me!": you would have thought the eighteen months were eighteen centuries. Mrs. Cheese stood up to the old bully, and giving what she got, got rather less. I came in for the most consistent cursing, and the worst outbreaks. She would stand up with eyes blazing and howl at me at the top of her voice (that bass shout impossible to convey in print which I called her "yell-growl"): "Ugh, yer father's child, every inch of 'ee; you feature him and yer character's as evil. Vicious little slut, pert wench, vile little sinner, adulterer's daughter, spawn of Beelzebub!" She would lash out as of old with her stick; more than once after I had passed sixteen she flogged me till I was black with bruises.

By training and by character—and following my Grandmother's example and for her sake—I could take it all with apparent meekness. But some outlet for the Beast in me was provided by her increasing deafness. Given Grandmother's absence from the room and a suitable modulation of mouth and voice, I could give her all that she gave in the way of abuse. As she sat back exhausted, with her eyes half closed in some passing lull, I would look up from my sewing, and with lips barely moving give her my views. "Oh, you wicked old woman; you cruel selfish beastly hag; you shrew; you enemy of all righteousness! How I loathe you, hate you, spit at you!"

Often Conscience smote me. "Where is your 'do unto others'?" So I would make allowances; she had been lonely, always unloved. She was old, unhappy. I could not help feeling that these were not excuses so much as explanations: she was just what an old maid who had domineered and been deferred to all her life would naturally be. She was herself carried to her logical conclusion.

Her habits changed. She only went to the morning Meeting, and that not always. On weekdays she got up late.

Our mornings would have appeared to outsiders a roaring and improbable farce.

At eight o'clock Grandmother and I would sit down to the breakfast table. No Aunt Jael.

"Is Miss Vickary coming down this morning, do you know, Mrs. Cheese?"

The latter grunted.

"Please go and see, will you, so that we can have her breakfast right for her."

Mrs. Cheese went upstairs, leaving the dining-room door open behind her. Just before we heard her knocking at Aunt Jael's door, we heard a more sinister noise in the bedroom above, a spring and a thud: Aunt Jael bounding out of bed to lock the door against her, usually managing to turn the key in the lock just as Mrs. Cheese began knocking.

"Lem'me in! Zich games wi' an ole body." She knocked and thumped.

No success. The silence of death.

"Go wi'out yer breakfast then!" A final thump or kick, and she waddled downstairs to the dining-room.

"No good, Mrs. Lee. 'Er's up to 'er tantrums, 'er's banged the door and turned the key."

Immediately the floor-thumping overhead began again. Aunt Jael was leaning out of bed and prodding the floor with her stick. Blows rained thunderously, monotonously; it was no good pretending they were not there, as I sometimes could for a few moments, relying on Grandmother's deafness. Then the noise would cease. We heard the bound and spring. She was out of bed, had opened the door and was howling downstairs over the banisters, "Hannah! Cheese! Child! Food, Food! I'm a-starvin', I'm a-starvin'!"

"Will you try once again, Mrs. Cheese, please?" said my Grandmother. "Or I will," she would add, seeing reluctance.

This always decided the old lady. To save Grandmother she puffed her way once more upstairs. Aunt Jael went on screaming from the landing, "Food, food!" till Mrs. Cheese was nearly up the stairs. Then she scuttled into her bedroom, and swiftly locked the door again.

"Starve away, ye old biddy, starve till ye die for all I care, an' I 'ope 'tis middlin' quick." She descended, calling in at the dining-room door as she paused, "I've done wi' the 'ole biddy fer iver."

In a few moments it all began again. Grandmother would have a journey, and then I. By the time our peaceful breakfast was over Aunt Jael had usually tired of her fun and was prepared to give in: another lengthy process. The first great step was when she got as far as leaving the door open. Usually if Grandmother or Mrs. Cheese took in her breakfast-tray she refused to have it near her and declared that the Child alone should bring her breakfast to her, the reason being that it was time for school and that I, therefore, was the most inconvenient person she could select. So they left the tray on the brass-nailed box outside her door, and I went in with it. Meanwhile she would close her eyes and moan: "I'm a-sinkin', I'm a-sinkin' for the want of food! A poor lonely woman left to starve! A-sinkin', a-sinkin', a-sinkin'—" her voice sank to a tragic whisper. Next, of course, the egg was too soft or too hard boiled, according as we had been pessimists or optimists in gauging the duration of my lady's mood that morning.

Dressing her was the next trial. I escaped it except in the holidays. Grandmother had to see to every button and lace and hook, and be railed at the whole time. And so on, throughout the day, morning, afternoon, evening, week in, week out, till life was a misery. My nerves were on edge, and if I kept my temper it was at the expense of my soul, which was filled with a devouring hate. There was one person, however, whose temper would not and did not hold out, and that was Mrs. Cheese. On that last day when my Great-Aunt sat up in bed and threw the whole breakfast-tray at her—a notable feat—she picked up the metal tea-pot, the only whole article in the wreckage, poured hot tea on the aggressor's face, and within a few hours had left the house. "I've warmed the ole biddy's nose, and this time I goes for iver."

* * * * * * *

Then, somewhere in the summer of 1864, came Maud. She brought no references, this being her first place, nor in our dire need could we insist on the usual requirements as to grace and salvation. She was not more than seventeen or eighteen, hardly a year or so older than I was; though with her hair up and her smart womanly attractive appearance she looked several years my senior. I had gathered from the Bible and from the talk at school that our sex was considered the more attractive, the better-looking, the more sought-after for its pleasingness. Neither the many female Saints of my acquaintance nor any member of our humble gallery of housemaids had helped me to understand. Maud was an explanation of much. Looking at her head of fine chestnut hair, gay pretty mouth and sparkling eyes, I began to apprehend why so many worthy folk—King David, King Solomon, Adam our first forefather—had gone astray. Her capacity for hard work equalled her good looks; her patience, good temper and self-sacrifice with Aunt Jael excelled them both. Here was the first servant we had ever taken without certificate of godliness; and she was the best.

From the beginning she devoted herself to Aunt Jael, who of course shouted at her, and told her she was a bold mincing hussy. She smiled. She just went on cooking, dusting, laying the tea table, hooking the blouse, or whatever it might be, always with the same patient smile. After a while her absolute imperviousness to abuse and her excellence as a lady's maid began to mollify my Great-Aunt, who came to treat her quite passably to her face, and sing loud her praises as soon as she left the room.

"There's a good girl, if you like, something like a girl. Do something for her, Hannah! Give her five pounds and a new suit of clothes."

This last remark became a mania, and half a dozen times a day as the door closed upon Maud, Aunt Jael would shout at my Grandmother, "Five pounds, I say, five pounds, and a new suit of clothes!" Neither did she produce, however.

To my surprise Grandmother did not care very much for our new servant.

"Isn't she good, Grandmother?" I asked one day.

She nodded her head and did not reply.

"You don't like her, Grandmother?"

No reply.

"Why now, because she's not a Christian?"

"No-o, my dear, I can't tell 'ee why. I don't like her: why, I don't even know myself; but there 'tis."

"But she's so good with aunt, and so patient."

"Yes—"

"Well, why then?"

"There 'tis, and that's all there is about it."

I was puzzled, as Grandmother was always so generous. There must be some mystery about Maud. Her beauty, a strange and new and troubling thing in my imagination. Her inhuman patience, equalling even my Grandmother's. And her carpet-slippers. She moved absolutely without sound.

Soon after her arrival there was a new development. Aunt Jael's indigestion and sleeplessness and ill temper had been getting steadily worse till at last Grandmother had called in Doctor le Mesurier. He prescribed a stimulant: my Great-Aunt was to take a small dose of brandy two or three times every twenty-four hours. Say a small dose at one of her nocturnal repasts and a sip in a wine-glass after dinner. It became one of my duties to go up to her bedroom after dinner, obtain the bottle from the secret cupboard, and pour out the measure. I brought it down and laid it on the corner of the table near her fireside perch.

After a few days, I noticed that more of the brandy seemed to disappear each day than two or even three doses in the night could explain. It was a tall bottle of Cognac, the dose was less than an inch in a wine glass taken not more than twice each day, and yet in under a week the bottle was empty. The fierce teetotalism of the later-nineteenth-century Americanized Protestantism was unknown among the Brethren, who followed more faithfully the old Puritan tradition and deemed a bottle of liquor a good thing if used and not abused. But though drink had never loomed large in my imagination, I associated it vaguely with the snares of this world. Between Maud the worldly one with her unfamiliar female beauty (snare of snares) and the vanishing brandy the connection was so obvious that I need not have felt so pleased with myself as I did when I first divined it. It was clear as noonday. Maud was the thief. She had access to the cupboard at all hours, she was led into temptation, and had fallen. When I stared at her she would turn a little pale.

Aunt Jael was not yet aware of the theft. Clearly she was in her dotage, as the Cognac cost six shillings a bottle. Was it my duty, my duty before the Lord, to speak out? I inclined to think so. Theft was theft, and theft was sin, and sin should always be exposed for righteousness' sake and the sinner's too. On the other hand, a voice inside me told me that it would be mean and cowardly to sneak on Maud. The feeling of pleasure that Aunt Jael was being thieved from also urged silence. If both these notions weighed against my exposing Maud, yet one seemed in a sense to balance the other in my conscience, for I tried to justify my delight in seeing Aunt Jael robbed by pretending to myself that the generous impulse of shielding Maud was my real reason for keeping silence. As one bottle and then another disappeared with unmistakable speed, and the inroads on Aunt Jael's purse became more extensive and gratifying, my piece of self-deception began to wear hollow. Conscience pricked: "You know the real reason you are not telling. You know it is to spite Aunt Jael and not to shield Maud. You know."

One night I prayed for guidance. The answer was clear. My evil delight in Aunt Jael being robbed was a sin which I could only atone for by repentance and by stopping the robbery, while to avoid having Maud exposed and dismissed (this had been in one way an argument for and not against telling, because the inevitable dismissal of so helpful a girl would inconvenience Aunt Jael; though here again it cut both ways, as Grandmother and I would be inconvenienced and harried still more when she was gone) it was my duty to speak to her privately. Thus she would be spared, Aunt Jael protected, my sin atoned for, and justice done. I obeyed instantly, got out of bed, lit my candle and crept up to Maud's bedroom. I knocked timidly. There was a faint scuffling inside: she was getting out of bed. She opened the door a few inches and her face appeared. It was sheet white. She was trembling violently.

"I am sorry, Maud, to wake you up, but I had to." I spoke hurriedly, a bit shamefacedly. "If you won't do it again, I'll not tell."

"Miss—" she gasped.

"Don't worry," I said frightened by her frightened appearance, "I'll promise never to say a word."

"Thank you, Miss Mary, I'm sure," she said shakily, "but oh, oh, you did give me a start!"

As she spoke she came right out of the room in her nightgown, shut the door behind her, and stood up against me on the half-landing, still trembling.

"Why did you shut the door like that?" I asked. Her extreme fear puzzled me.

She hesitated for a second. "Oh, I must see you back to bed or you'll be getting your death of cold."

"Good night, miss," she said. Before she blew out the candle I noticed that her face was as white as ever.

Somehow she had seemed too frightened.

After all, was stealing brandy so terrible? Was dismissal from Aunt Jael's service so hideous a blow? Then there was the way she had closed the door behind her.

I heard her creep her way upstairs. My heart stood still as I heard another door open quite near me; Grandmother's by the sound of it. No doubt she had been awakened and had heard our going to and fro on the stairs. I sat up in bed so as to hear better. I fancied she was standing at her door as though listening. Then a voice spoke, sounding strangely in the silence. It was my Grandmother's.

"Child, what are you doing? Is that you, child? What are you doing?"

I jumped out of bed and opened my door. "What is it, Grandmother? I'm here, what is it?"

An odd expression came into her eyes.

"Then who was it going downstairs just now? Somebody crouched when I called out, then seemed to wriggle their way further down; somebody in white, like your nightgown. I thought you were sleepwalking."

Some one in white wriggling downstairs! Was not Grandmother herself sleepwalking? It could not be Maud, for I had heard her close her door.

"Maud!" called my Grandmother.

"Yes'm," replied a voice with amazing quickness. She had been listening. But she spoke from upstairs. "Yes'm, did you call me, m'm?"

At this moment the front door of the house was unmistakably opened and then closed again. Some one had gone out.

My Grandmother, an odd little figure in her nightcap and gown, looked very grave. "Get to bed, Maud," she called, "and you too, child."

After pondering a certain terrible suspicion in my mind for a few minutes, I fell asleep.

Next morning I shirked seeing Maud. I felt shamefaced for what I had said to her in the night and far more for the thing I had hardly dared to think. I got downstairs later than usual. The dining-room was dark, the blinds had not been drawn. I went into the kitchen; there were no signs of life, the fire had not been lit. I rushed upstairs to her bedroom and burst in without knocking; she was not there, the drawers of the bedroom chest were pulled out and emptied, her box had gone. She had run away.

Months later, I saw a well-dressed young woman in the street. The face was familiar. She was wheeling a baby's perambulator. She looked the other way.

Nothing was said to Aunt Jael, who theorized on Maud's mysterious departure, and declared that my Grandmother's cruel treatment had forced her to flee for her life. She cursed at Maud for an ingrate, though still fitfully maintaining that she was well worth five pounds, not to mention a new suit of clothes.

Maud's departure marked the beginning of a still more miserable period at Bear Lawn. We were unable for some time to get another servant, and though Sister Briggs came in twice a week to help, there was more than enough work for Grandmother and me, especially as it was term-time. I had to get up at half past five, light the kitchen fire, sweep the rooms, and help Grandmother with the breakfast. I had to cook, sew, dust, do my homework, and dance continual attendance on Aunt Jael. I was wretched, but too hard driven to mope overmuch. Grandmother and I worked early and late, earning nothing but abuse from Aunt Jael, who now ceased to do any work whatever, even to help with the cooking or to carve at table. Her temper became more ungovernable, her abuse more outrageous. All her life she had had a certain dignity—harsh, unlovely, but still dignity—an august presence, a majesty in evil. There was little trace of majesty or dignity in the nagging old shrew she was becoming now. If you get into a pet because the sprouts are undercooked, hurl the vegetable-dish on the floor, tread the sprouts into the carpet, cry "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust" ("Brussels to Brussels" would have been apter), wave the spoon with rage, and gurgle like a stuck pig, you may be many many things, but dignified, no. This was an almost daily experience.

In the middle of this period came her eightieth birthday. There was no jubilee.

My chief Cross was my resolve of absolute evenness of temper. Evenness rather than serenity was the word: I could never take my Grandmother's quiet delight in sitting down under insult and injustice, as though they were flattering temptations sent me by the Lord, tokens of heavenly privilege. I could always turn the other cheek, but never as though I enjoyed it. Once when I had waited on Aunt Jael hand and foot all day; taking up her breakfast (after three or four attempts and plenty of frolic with the door), dressing her ("no one else would do"), making her bed and tidying her room (while she sat in a chair carping), cooking her a special dinner and arranging it on a little table by the armchair (she felt too ill to sit up to table), doing her sewing ("Clumsy little slut with the needle!"), and reading to her aloud from the Word (her eyes were too tired to read herself); when after tea I had begun and finished the last chapter of Proverbs—"Many daughters have done virtuously but Thou excellest them all"—and she had no further behest; I thought that at last I was free for a few moments. I sat down at the piano and began playing my new piece: Polish Dance in A Minor. I had not played more than a few bars when I heard her get up from her chair. Without warning I received a violent box on the ears, with "That for idling away without my permission on this ungodly trash" as she snatched the music and crumpled it up into a paper ball. The blow was dealt with such force that I fell off the stool on to the floor, where she began belabouring me with her stick.

Struggling to my feet, I began in my intensest manner, bitterer than any rage: "Oh may the Lord punish you, may He visit you with pain and illness and agony in this world—" I do not know how far I had got but the door opened and my Grandmother came in.

"My dear, you are beside yourself."

"Grandmother, hear me. I have toiled for her all day long, and now when I've sat down for a minute to practise she came behind me unawares and gave me a blow that knocked me on to the floor and then began flogging me with her stick."

"Sister—" began my Grandmother.

"None of your 'sister,' if you please!" She went up to Grandmother, who was near the bookcase, and pushed her roughly against it. "No interfering, d'yer see? When the child does what I don't like, I do what I like to her. See?" She clutched Grandmother by the shoulders, and began banging her viciously against the bookcase.

"You brute!" I cried, and with a strength I should not have found in self-defence tore her away from Grandmother. Loosing hold, she turned on me; I ran for safety to the other side of my guardian-angel table. She hesitated for a moment, remembering perhaps her ancient dignity, and then stalked out of the room. Which was after all the most dignified thing to do.

The fact was, her health and self-control were failing together; but if more of a shrew, she was less shrewd than of old. She never noticed, for instance, how the brandy was disappearing. The odd thing about this brandy was that after Maud's departure it had been disappearing more quickly and mysteriously than ever. A new suspicion entered my mind. Sister Briggs never went upstairs. It could not be Grandmother. It was not magic. It was not me....

One day just before dinner, Aunt Jael had not yet appeared in the dining room. This was surprising; on her latest and worst days she usually descended by eleven o'clock.

"I've heard her moving about," said Grandmother. "Dinner is ready, give her a call."

Before I had time to obey, however, I heard her bedroom door open. We sat down to table. The dining-room door was open, and I fancied there was something odd and shuffling in the way she was coming downstairs. Then I was startled by a series of thuds; it sounded as though she had lost her footing, and fallen down the last two or three stairs. We ran out, for Grandmother had heard too.

"Are you hurt, Jael?" She was lying full length on the bottom stair, her face was dark and flushed, her eyes odd and bleary. She appeared stunned, though it surprised me that to fall two or three stairs should have had so serious an effect.

She did not answer Grandmother, but began slavering and hiccoughing.

"Give her five poundsh an' a new shuit of clothes." The sentence was broken by hiccoughs. My nostrils caught the sudden reek of spirits.

Aunt Jael was drunk.

I looked at Grandmother and Grandmother looked at me. She spoke in a low voice, and there were tears in her eyes. "'Tis hard, my dear. Your aunt has lived a godly sober life these eighty years—and now, look! We must take it as His will."

Resolves are weak, and pity is stronger than hate. I had been looking forward all my life and during the past few weeks more venomously than ever to the day when I should see my hated Aunt the victim of some supreme humiliation. The day was here. There she lay: drunken, shameful, loathsome. Surely this was humiliation enough. I should have exulted in her shame; I was indeed wicked enough to have done so, but that some one different in me, the Other Me (at such moments of extreme alternative between good and evil I always felt the Second Presence), had only pity and sorrow. My cheeks burned as I thought of how I had been looking forward to a triumph like this. I saw in a flash the shamefulness of spite, the folly of all revenge.

We tried to lift her up. She was too heavy, especially as she resisted, at first dully and then with vigour. I stepped over her body on to the second stair. When I knelt down and began pulling at her shoulder she struck me with her fist and set up a shriek of "Murder!" The sudden noise deterred us. With tipsy cunning she noticed this, and followed up her success; shrieking "Murder!" again and again like a thing demented.

In the middle of pandemonium the front door knocker sounded. Grandmother was on the other side of Aunt Jael, and went to see who it might be. It was the curate from the Parish Church, who had recently come to live next door, No. 6 The Lawn. We had never spoken to him and hardly knew his name.

"Er—umph—Madam, I trust you will excuse me; but we—er—fancied there was some trouble in your house. We heard something, Mrs. White and I, and I wondered if I could—er—perhaps help in any way."

"Yes, sir, you could," said my Grandmother. "Come in. My sister has had a seizure. She's not herself at all. My grandchild and I haven't the strength between us to lift her upstairs to bed. You'll kindly help us? Come along the hall to the foot of the stairs. This way, will you?"

I prayed inwardly that he would not discover the truth, but as he bent down to take Aunt Jael's shoulder I noticed the slightest twitch of his nostrils followed immediately by an involuntary I-thought-as-much expression which he instantly concealed.

It was a memorable journey upstairs. How she writhed and punched and struck and spat and shrieked. Somehow we got her there and somehow we laid her on the bed.

We went downstairs to show the Reverend Mr. White out. "I shall be discretion itself," he volunteered meaningly. I saw a shade of annoyance on Grandmother's face; she had not noticed that he had noticed.

When we returned upstairs after the Reverend Mr. White had gone we found her bedroom door locked. For no entreaty would she let us in. Later on my Grandmother pleaded earnestly to let her take her in some food. There was no reply. All through the night her door remained locked; I tried it half a dozen times. Next morning we could do no better. With the infinite resources of her cupboard she had of course enough to eat; but—this was our anxiety—she had far too much to drink also. There was a bottle of sherry, but as far as I remembered not more than an inch or two of brandy in the current bottle. Still our fears were of the darkest.

By Tuesday dinner-time our anxiety had reached a climax. In a few minutes the Clinkers would arrive. Grandmother had half a mind to send me round to tell them not to come; decided that this would be likelier to excite suspicion than letting them come in the ordinary way, and telling them that Jael was not well enough to appear.

At half-past one sounded the immemorial rat-tat-tat. Salvation was first. She rushed in and flung her arms round my Grandmother's neck.

"Oh, my pore 'Annah, what a trial! Pore dear Jael. Who'd 'a' thought it?" Her teeth shone. She wheezed unwelcome sympathy.

"Salvation," asked my Grandmother sternly, "who told you?"

"Aw my dear, 'tis the talk uv th' town. Brother Obadiah Tizzard came to see Glory this mornin' as 'e sometimes does uv a mornin' to discourse on 'oly things, an' 'e told us jis what 'is servant, ole Jenny Fippe, 'ad to'd 'im. 'Er 'ad it from 'er young niece who's friendly like with a young man who sings in the choir, or whatever 'tis they caals' it, at the parish church, 'im havin' been to'd by the passon 'imself, who lives next door to you, who say 'e were called in 'ere by most 'orrible shrieks, so Brother Obadiah says Jenny says, and 'e see'd pore dear Jael in a turrible way, wavin' a bottle o' brandy in one 'and an' poundin' 'is face till 'twere all a pulp of blood with the other. 'You've got a wrong story this time, Brother Obadiah Tizzard,' I says, 'Jael Vickary is my oldest friend and the soberest woman in North Devon. 'Tis all a passel O' lies, Brother Obadiah, you mark my words,' says I, didn't I, Glory, says I? Aw my pore dear Jael, she's in bed maybe. Take me to 'er, 'Annah."

"No," said my Grandmother very firmly. "What you heard is very much more than the truth, and you'll please me to keep a quiet tongue in your head about it a bit better than the parson did. But she's not well, and you're not to see her."

It was a constrained gathering that afternoon; our godly discussion halted lamely at times. We were all relieved when Grandmother went into the kitchen rather earlier than usual to prepare tea. While she was out of the room, I heard Aunt Jael's door open: Grandmother had left the dining-room door open. I did not know for a moment what to do, whether to rush upstairs to prevent Aunt Jael descending, or fly into the kitchen to warn Grandmother, when it might be too late. I did nothing. The three of us sat in breathless silence as she stumped downstairs, and watched with open mouths and breathless excitement till a horrible bird-like apparition in night-cap and gown came in. Her eyes were still bloodshot, but she was different from yesterday; merry-maudlin, not vicious drunk. Fortunately, as I had judged, there had been very little more brandy, and she had had recourse to wine. She pranced up to her visitors, chuckling idiotically.

"Good day to 'ee Salvation, Good day to 'ee Glory!" She chucked them under the chin, dug them slyly in the ribs, tweaked their solemn ears. She had a look of beatific idiocy on her red beaky old face, and a tipsy laugh broken by stalwart hiccoughs.

"You'm thinkin'—hic—I'm tipsy. Nothin'—hic—of the kin'—'Tis a very goo'—hic—imitashun, a very goo'—hic—imitashun."

She seized a couple of forks from the table, which I had just finished laying for tea, took one in each fist and began to perform a series of dumb-bell exercises, alternating one movement up with both arms, one forward, and one to the sides, giggling and chuckling inanely the while. She looked like a performing parrot dressed in white. For a few moments Glory, Salvation and I had been undecided whether to take the performance as tragedy or farce. Suddenly we all began laughing together, and were soon giggling as uncontrollably as Aunt Jael herself.

She tired of the dumb-bell exercises, threw down the forks and cried out "Come on now, letsh have a game." Before we knew where we were the four of us were whirling round and round in the space between the table and the fireplace, singing "Ring a ring of roses," like the four lunatics and godly Plymouth Sisters that we were. Three of us were eighty years old and the fourth not yet eighteen. At the high tide of the bacchanal we became suddenly and stupidly aware that Grandmother was at the door; sane, inexorable, watching us. We parted hands lamely. Aunt Jael, dizzy and without support, tottered back against the firegrate and would have fallen headlong had I not rushed forward just in time to save her.

"She's a good li'l girl, Hannah, after all; she's a good li'l girl. Give her something, give her—"

"Give her what then?" said my Grandmother, wishing to humour her.

"Five poundsh, my dear, and a new shuit of clothes!"

The Aunt Jael that rose months later from her sick bed was not the demented wretch of that tipsy summer; rather the old one I knew, but with memory and will and voice and authority all weaker. The great domineerer had passed into her dotage; was but the valiant wreck of an autocrat.