"Awful to marry a man who snores," Miriam remarked. "Uncle Alfred does. I heard him."
"You're not thinking of marrying him?" John asked.
"No. I don't like the little man," she said incisively. "He gave me his card as though he'd met me in a train. In case we needed him! I've thrown it into Mrs. Pinderwell's desk." She looked frowningly at the fire. "But he liked me," she said, throwing up her head and defying the silent criticism of the company. "Yes, he did, but I hadn't enough time."
"That's better than too much," Helen said shrewdly, and stretched her stockinged feet to the bars. "Thank you for the tea, and now let us wash up."
"You're scorching," Miriam said, and no one moved. The lamplight had driven the shadows further back, and the room was the more peaceful for the cry of the wind and the hissing of the rain.
"Rupert will get wet," Helen said.
"Poor lad!" John mocked drowsily over his pipe.
"And he doesn't know about our father," Miriam said from her little stool. "Our father, who may be in Heaven."
"That's where Notya is afraid he is," Helen sighed remembering her stepmother's lonely figure on the sofa backed by the bare window and the great moor.
"Does she hate him as much as that?"