The doctor ate in silence, voraciously, as he always did, and his wife presently said in a thin, vicious voice:
“Of course, you’ve nothing to say to your wife, Herbert. It’s easy enough to talk and be amusing with strangers, isn’t it?—but I suppose it isn’t worth while in your own home.”
“What’s up, Amy?” he growled. He did not look at Elsie, who found herself fixing apprehensive eyes on him, although she knew it was a betrayal.
“Why should anything be up, as you call it? But as it isn’t very amusing for me to sit here all day while you eat, and as I happen to be rather busy, strange though it may seem, I think I’ll ask you to excuse me.”
She turned her head towards Elsie, but spoke without looking at her. “I’ll thank you to come and find that paper pattern for Gladys’s smock. The child isn’t fit to be seen.”
Mrs. Woolley pushed Elsie out of the room in front of her, making it obvious that she meant her to have no opportunity of exchanging a look with the doctor.
Throughout the afternoon she never let the girl out of her sight until Elsie had actually left the house to go and fetch the two children from school.
It was abundantly evident that a crisis impended. The atmospheric tension affected everyone in the house, and Elsie, her nerves on edge, became frantic.
She said, immediately after supper, that she was tired, and should go to bed, and Mrs. Woolley laughed, shortly and sarcastically.
Elsie went up to her room and cried hysterically on her bed until Gladys woke and began to whine enquiries.