Cuckoo got up from her chair with no show of emotion and moved towards her bedroom stonily to pack her box. She didn't care. She was in a mood to lie down in the gutter and wait the last blow of Fate, living only in her one obstinate determination to do what the doctor had told her, the one thing Julian had asked of her. She did not any longer war with words against the purple and hard-breathing landlady. And her silence and her movement of obedience awed Mrs. Brigg for the moment into another mood. She shuffled after Cuckoo into the bedroom.
"Eh? What is it?" she ejaculated. "What are you a-doing of?"
"Going," Cuckoo threw at her.
"Now?"
"Yes."
"Where to?"
No answer. Cuckoo was thrusting the few things still left to her into the only box she now possessed in the world. Mrs. Brigg stood in the folding doorway watching, and making mouths, as is the fashion of the elderly when emotional.
"What are you going for?" she said presently, as Cuckoo, bending down, stuffed a white petticoat into the depths.
"Can't pay," snarled Cuckoo.
"It don't matter—for a day or two," said Mrs. Brigg, reluctantly.