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“But who doesn’t have a sudden pain sometimes, my boy. We all do. ”

“And what’s it done?”

“I don’t know,” she said, “but I don’t suppose it’s anything. ”

The big lamp in the corner was screened with a dark green, so that he could scarcely see her face. He was strung tight with apprehension and many emotions. Then his brow knitted.

“What did you go pulling your inside out at cabbages for,” he asked, “and the ground frozen? You’d go on dragging and dragging, if you killed yourself. ”

“Somebody’s got to get them,” she said.

“You needn’t do yourself harm. ”

But they had reached futility.

Miss Louisa could hear plainly downstairs. Her heart sank. It seemed so hopeless between them.

“Are you sure it’s nothing much, mother?” he asked, appealing, after a little silence.

“Ay, it’s nothing,” said the old woman, rather bitter.

“I don’t want you to—to—to be badly—you know. ”

“Go an’ get your dinner,” she said. She knew she was going to die: moreover, the pain was torture just then. “They’re only cosseting me up a bit because I’m an old woman. Miss Louisa’s verygood—and she’ll have got your dinner ready, so you’d better go and eat it. ”

He felt stupid and ashamed. His mother put him off. He had to turn away. The pain burned in his bowels. He went downstairs. The mother was glad he was gone, so that she could moan with pain.

He had resumed the old habit of eating before he washed himself. Miss Louisa served his dinner. It was strange and exciting to her. She was strung up tense, trying to understand him and his mother. She watched him as he sat. He was turned away from his food, looking in the fire. Her soul watched him, trying to see what he was. His black face and arms were uncouth, he was foreign. His face was masked black with coal-dust. She could not see him, she could not even know him. The brown eyebrows, the steady eyes, the coarse, small moustache above the closed mouth—these were the only familiar indications. What was he, as he sat there in his pit-dirt? She could not see him, and it hurt her.

She ran upstairs, presently coming down with the flannels and the bran-bag, to heat them, because the pain was on again.

He was half-way through his dinner. He put down the fork, suddenly nauseated.

“They will soothe the wrench,” she said. He watched, useless and left out.

“Is she bad?” he asked.

“I think she is,” she answered.

It was useless for him to stir or comment. Louisa was busy. She went upstairs. The poor old woman was in a white, cold sweat of pain. Louisa’s face was sullen with suffering as she went about to relieve her. Then she sat and waited. The pain passed gradually, the old woman sank into a state of coma. Louisa still sat silent by the bed. She heard the sound of water downstairs. Then came the voice of the old mother, faint but unrelaxing:

“Alfred’s washing himself—he’ll want his back washing—”

Louisa listened anxiously, wondering what the sick woman wanted.

“He can’t bear if his back isn’t washed—” the old woman persisted, in a cruel attention to his needs. Louisa rose and wiped the sweat from the yellowish brow.

“I will go down,” she said soothingly.

“If you would,” murmured the sick woman.

Louisa waited a moment. Mrs Durant closed her eyes, having discharged her duty. The young woman went downstairs. Herself, or the man, what did they matter? Only the suffering woman must be considered.

Alfred was kneeling on the hearthrug, stripped to the waist, washing himself in a large panchion of earthenware. He did so every evening, when he had eaten his dinner; his brothers had done so before him. But Miss Louisa was strange in the house.