She smiled at me with a little sarcasm, and added: “You always thought more of him than anybody, didn’t you? Ah, well, come up and see him.”
I followed her up the back stairs, which led out of the kitchen, and which emerged straight in a bedroom. We crossed the hollow-sounding plaster-floor of this naked room and opened a door at the opposite side. George lay in bed watching us with apprehensive eyes.
“Here is Cyril come to see you,” said Emily, “so I’ve brought him up, for I didn’t know when you’d be downstairs.”
A small smile of relief came on his face, and he put out his hand from the bed. He lay with the disorderly clothes pulled up to his chin. His face was discoloured and rather bloated, his nose swollen.
“Don’t you feel so well this morning?” asked Emily, softening with pity when she came into contact with his sickness.
“Oh, all right,” he replied, wishing only to get rid of us.
“You should try to get up a bit, it’s a beautiful morning, warm and soft—” she said gently. He did not reply, and she went downstairs.
I looked round to the cold, whitewashed room, with its ceiling curving and sloping down the walls. It was sparsely furnished, and bare of even the slightest ornament. The only things of warm colour were the cow and horse skins on the floor. All the rest was white or grey or drab. On one side, the roof sloped down so that the window was below my knees, and nearly touching the floor, on the other side was a larger window, breast high. Through it one could see the jumbled, ruddy roofs of the sheds and the skies. The tiles were shining with patches of vivid orange lichen. Beyond was the corn-field, and the men, small in the distance, lifting the sheaves on the cart.
“You will come back to farming again, won’t you?” I asked him, turning to the bed. He smiled.
“I don’t know,” he answered dully.