"No."
"What is it, then?"
He stooped to lift the heavy burden, and she heard him say a word mumblingly, as though ashamed of it.
She moved about the room, crying, "A stroke! It's ugly. It's horrid. A stroke! Why can't they say a blow?"
He could not bear the bitterness of her distress. "Don't, don't, my dear," he said, and startled her into quiet.
The doctor came and went, promising to return, and a nurse with large crowded teeth assumed control over the sick-room. There was little to be done; she sat on a chair by the window and, because of those excessive teeth, she seemed to smile continually at Mildred Caniper's mockery of death.
Outside, a cold rain was falling: it splashed on the laurel leaves by the gate and threw a shifting curtain across the moor. The fire in the room made small noises, as though it tried to talk; the nurse bent over her patient now and then, but Mildred Caniper did not move.
Downstairs, in the kitchen, Miriam sat on her feet in the big armchair: she was almost motionless, like one who has been startled into a posture and dare not move lest her fear should take shape. The rain darkened the room and filled it with a sound of hissing; a kettle whistled on the fire, and there was a smell of airing linen.
Helen turned a sheet. "The nurse must have Christopher's bed," she said at last. "We must carry it in."