"Oh!" Helen said.
"I'm sorry about it. I tried not to seem efficient, but there's something about me—charm, I think. They must have noticed how I talk to the old ladies who don't know how to make out their cheques. So they're sending me, but I don't know that I ought to leave you all."
"Of course you must."
"I can come home on Saturdays."
"Yes. And Notya's better, and John is near. Why shouldn't you go?"
"Because your face fell."
"It's only that everybody's going. It seems like the end of things." She pictured the house without Rupert and she had a sense of desolation, for no one would whistle on the track at night and make the house warmer and more beautiful with his entrance; there would be no one to look up from his book with unfailing readiness to listen to everything and understand it; no one to say pleasant things which made her happy.
"Why," she said, plumbing the depths of loss, "there'll be no one to get up early for!"
"Ah, it's Miriam who'll feel that!" he said.
"And even Daniel won't come any more. He's tired of Miriam's foolishness."