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By Root 5734 0

all right. Not much gets past the things in a room, I daresay, and chairs and tables don't go to the grave so soon. Every time I take the soft cloth to that stuff in the drawingroom, I could say, 'Well, you know a bit more.' My goodness, when I got here and saw all Mrs. Quayne's stuff where Mrs. Thomas had put it—if I'd have been a silly, I should have said it gave me quite a look. Well, it didn't speak, and I didn't. If Mr. and Mrs. Thomas are what you say, nervous, no doubt they are nervous of what's not said. I would not be the one to blame them: they live the best way they can. Unnatural living runs in a family, and the furniture knows it, you be sure. Good furniture knows what's what. It knows it's made for a purpose, and it respects itself—when I say you're made for a purpose you start off crying. Oh, furniture like we've got is too much for some that would rather not have the past. If I just had to look at it and have it looking at me, I'd go jumpy, I daresay. But when it's your work it can't do anything to you. Why, that furniture—I've been at it years and years with the soft cloth: I know it like my own face.... Oh yes, I notice them, all right. But I'm not the one to speak: I've got no time. When they made a place for it, they made a place for me, and they soon saw nothing would come of that."

"When I came, though, it was worse."

"It was proper," said Matchett quickly. "The first mortal thing he had ever asked since he went—"

"Yes, this was the house my father talked about. He used to tell me how nice it was. Though he never came here, he did walk past it once. He told me it had a blue door and stood at a corner, and I expect he imagined the inside. 'That's the part of London to live in,' he used to say, 'those houses are leased direct from the King, and they have an outlook fit for Buckingham Palace.' Once, in Nice, he bought a book about birds and showed me pictures of the water birds on this lake. He said he had watched them. He told me about the scarlet flowerbeds—I used to imagine them right down to the lake, not with that path between. He said this was the one gentleman's park left, and that Thomas would be wrong to live anywhere else. He used to tell me, and to tell people we met, how well Thomas got on in business, and how pretty Anna was—stylish, he used to call her—and how much they entertained, and what gay parties they had. He used to say, a young man getting on in the world is quite right to cut a bit of a dash. Whenever we spent a day in any smart place, he always used to notice the ladies' clothes, and say to me, 'Now that would look well on Anna.' Yes, he was ever so proud of Thomas and her. It always made him happy to talk about them. When I was little and stupid, I used to say, 'Why can't we see them soon? and he used to say, 'Some day.' He promised that some day I should be with them—and now, of course, I am."

Matchett said triumphantly: "Ah, he got his way—in the end."

"I liked them for making Father proud. But when I was with Mother, I had to forget them—you see, they were a sort of trouble to her. She thought Anna laughed at how we lived."

"Oh, Mrs. Thomas didn't trouble to laugh. She'd let live and let die—so long as she wasn't trespassed upon. And she wasn't trespassed upon."

"She had to have me here."

"She had this room empty, waiting," said Matchett sharply. "She never filled it, for all she is so clever. And she knows how to make a diversion of anything—dolling this room up with clocks and desks and frills. (Not but what it's pretty, and you like it, I should hope.) No, she's got her taste, and she dearly likes to use it. Past that she'll never go."

"You mean, she'll never be fond of me?"

"So that's what you want?" Matchett said, so jealously pouncing that Portia drew back in her bed.

"She had a right, of course, to be where I am this minute," Matchett went on in a cold, dispassionate voice. "I've no call to be dawdling up here, not with all that sewing." Her weight stiffened on the bed; drawing herself up straight she folded her arms sternly, as though locking love for ever