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Compare this with the arrival at Gloucester: the carriage for her mistress, the dog-cart for herself with the luggage; the drive out past the river, the pleasant trees of the carriage-approach; and herself sitting beside Arthur, everybody so polite to her.

She had come home–for good! Her heart nearly stopped beating as she trudged up that hideous and interminable hill, beside the laden figure. What a come-down! What a come-down! She could not take it with her usual bright cheerfulness. She knew it all too well. It is easy to bear up against the unusual, but the deadly familiarity of an old stale past!

He dumped the bags down under a lamp-post, for a rest. There they stood, the two of them, in the lamplight. Passers-by stared at her, and gave good-night to Harry. Her they hardly knew, she had become a stranger.

‘They’re too heavy for you, let me carry one,’ she said.

‘They begin to weigh a bit by the time you’ve gone a mile,’ he answered.

‘Let me carry the little one,’ she insisted.

‘Tha can ha’e it for a minute, if ter’s a mind,’ he said, handing over the valise.

And thus they arrived in the streets of shops of the little ugly town on top of the hill. How everybody stared at her; my word, how they stared! And the cinema was just going in, and the queues were tailing down the road to the corner. And everybody took full stock of her. ‘Night, Harry!’ shouted the fellows, in an interested voice.

However, they arrived at her aunt’s–a little sweet-shop in a side street. They ‘pinged’ the door-bell, and her aunt came running forward out of the kitchen.

‘There you are, child! Dying for a cup of tea, I’m sure. How are you?’

Fanny’s aunt kissed her, and it was all Fanny could do to refrain from bursting into tears, she felt so low. Perhaps it was her tea she wanted.

‘You’ve had a drag with that luggage,’ said Fanny’s aunt to Harry.

‘Ay–I’m not sorry to put it down,’ he said, looking at his hand which was crushed and cramped by the bag handle.

Then he departed to see about Heather’s greengrocery cart.

When Fanny sat at tea, her aunt, a grey-haired, fair-faced little woman, looked at her with an admiring heart, feeling bitterly sore for her. For Fanny was beautiful: tall, erect, finely coloured, with her delicately arched nose, her rich brown hair, her large lustrous grey eyes. A passionate woman–a woman to be afraid of. So proud, so inwardly violent! She came of a violent race.

It needed a woman to sympathize with her. Men had not the courage. Poor Fanny! She was such a lady, and so straight and magnificent. And yet everything seemed to do her down. Every time she seemed to be doomed to humiliation and disappointment, this handsome, brilliantly sensitive woman, with her nervous, overwrought laugh.

‘So you’ve really come back, child?’ said her aunt.

‘I really have, Aunt,’ said Fanny.

‘Poor Harry! I’m not sure, you know, Fanny, that you’re not taking a bit of an advantage of him.’

‘Oh, Aunt, he’s waited so long, he may as well have what he’s waited for.’ Fanny laughed grimly.

‘Yes, child, he’s waited so long, that I’m not sure it isn’t a bit hard on him. You know, I like him, Fanny–though as you know quite well, I don’t think he’s good enough for you. And I think he thinks so himself, poor fellow.’

‘Don’t you be so sure of that, Aunt. Harry is common, but he’s not humble. He wouldn’t think the Queen was any too good for him, if he’d a mind to her.’

‘Well–It’s as well if he has a proper opinion of himself.’

‘It depends what you call proper,’ said Fanny. ‘But he’s got his good points–‘

‘Oh, he’s a nice fellow, and I like him, I do like him. Only, as I tell you, he’s not good enough for you.’

‘I’ve made up my mind, Aunt,’ said Fanny, grimly.