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She found Hadrian and her father talking away. The young man was short of speech as a rule, but he could find his tongue with his ‘uncle’. They were both sipping a glass of brandy, and smoking, and chatting like a pair of old cronies. Hadrian was telling about Canada. He was going back there when his leave was up.

‘You wouldn’t like to stop in England, then?’ said Mr. Rockley.

‘No, I wouldn’t stop in England,’ said Hadrian.

‘How’s that? There’s plenty of electricians here,’ said Mr. Rockley.

‘Yes. But there’s too much difference between the men and the employers over here–too much of that for me,’ said Hadrian.

The sick man looked at him narrowly, with oddly smiling eyes.

‘That’s it, is it?’ he replied.

Matilda heard and understood. ‘So that’s your big idea, is it, my little man,’ she said to herself. She had always said of Hadrian that he had no proper respect for anybody or anything, that he was sly and common. She went down to the kitchen for a sotto voce confab with Emmie.

‘He thinks a rare lot of himself!’ she whispered.

‘He’s somebody, he is!’ said Emmie with contempt.

‘He thinks there’s too much difference between masters and men, over here,’ said Matilda.

‘Is it any different in Canada?’ asked Emmie.

‘Oh, yes–democratic,’ replied Matilda, ‘He thinks they’re all on a level over there.’

‘Ay, well he’s over here now,’ said Emmie dryly, ‘so he can keep his place.’

As they talked they saw the young man sauntering down the garden, looking casually at the flowers. He had his hands in his pockets, and his soldier’s cap neatly on his head. He looked quite at his ease, as if in possession. The two women, fluttered, watched him through the window.

‘We know what he’s come for,’ said Emmie, churlishly. Matilda looked a long time at the neat khaki figure. It had something of the charity-boy about it still; but now it was a man’s figure, laconic, charged with plebeian energy. She thought of the derisive passion in his voice as he had declaimed against the propertied classes, to her father.

‘You don’t know, Emmie. Perhaps he’s not come for that,’ she rebuked her sister. They were both thinking of the money.

They were still watching the young soldier. He stood away at the bottom of the garden, with his back to them, his hands in his pockets, looking into the water of the willow pond. Matilda’s dark-blue eyes had a strange, full look in them, the lids, with the faint blue veins showing, dropped rather low. She carried her head light and high, but she had a look of pain. The young man at the bottom of the garden turned and looked up the path. Perhaps he saw them through the window. Matilda moved into shadow.

That afternoon their father seemed weak and ill. He was easily exhausted. The doctor came, and told Matilda that the sick man might die suddenly at any moment–but then he might not. They must be prepared.

So the day passed, and the next. Hadrian made himself at home. He went about in the morning in his brownish jersey and his khaki trousers, collarless, his bare neck showing. He explored the pottery premises, as if he had some secret purpose in so doing, he talked with Mr. Rockley, when the sick man had strength. The two girls were always angry when the two men sat talking together like cronies. Yet it was chiefly a kind of politics they talked.

On the second day after Hadrian’s arrival, Matilda sat with her father in the evening. She was drawing a picture which she wanted to copy. It was very still, Hadrian was gone out somewhere, no one knew where, and Emmie was busy. Mr. Rockley reclined on his bed, looking out in silence over his evening-sunny garden.

‘If anything happens to me, Matilda,’ he said, ‘you won’t sell this house–you’ll stop here–‘

Matilda’s eyes took their slightly haggard look as she stared at her father.