Alice went to the fireplace, knelt down, and spread her hands to the blaze. Her mother approached her again.
‘Won’t you give me no answer, Alice?’
‘He couldn’t come, mother. Something important is keeping him.’
‘Something important? And why did he want you there?’
Alice rose to her feet, made one false beginning, then spoke to the point.
‘Dick’s married, mother.’
The old woman’s eyes seemed to grow small in her wrinkled face, as if directing themselves with effort upon something minute. They looked straight into the eyes of her daughter, but had a more distant focus. The fixed gaze continued for nearly a minute.
‘What are you talking about, girl?’ she said at length, in a strange, rattling voice. ‘Why, I’ve seen Emma this very morning. Do you think she wouldn’t ‘a told me if she’d been a wife?’
Alice was frightened by the look and the voice.
‘Mother, it isn’t Emma at all. It’s someone at Wanley. We can’t help it, mother. It’s no use taking on. Now sit down and make yourself quiet. It isn’t our fault.’