Mary shivered. They were as lifeless as the uprooted trees, carried from the wold side and laid in the back garden of the farm, awaiting destruction for firewood. Their talk was as meaningless as the rustle of dry leaves on brittle twigs.
Mrs. Holmes gasped her way across the room, and sat down beside Mary.
"Yes, you know," she began without further prelude, "I've just come back from Harrogate, and it hasn't done me a bit of good. Ethel, my cook you know, has given notice, and my nerves are all to pieces. You don't know a nice girl, do you? You're so lucky with maids, I know—always keep them. Then, of course, having a village like that to choose from...."
In the other corner Anne and Mrs. Toby, who had just arrived, were discussing the price of wool for socks. Aunt Jane's head was nodding in the arm-chair near the fire. Only Sarah sat alert and grim. "I won't grow like them. I won't!" thought Mary. "I won't ever leave the farm and come here to grow all withered and dry. I won't even stay alive like Sarah, and hate everything that alters because I can't grow along with it."
She hardly listened to Janet's tale of woe.
Then there was a sudden rustle and clatter and Ursula Robson entered the room. She came in as usual unannounced, and Mary wondered if anyone could be more unlike the ladies round the fire. From her scarlet toque to her high-heeled shoes, she looked about as appropriate in that Victorian gathering as Dodo in a Cranford parlour.
"Yes, I've just dropped in for a moment," she announced, greeting her relatives with breathless energy. Ursula had cultivated a manner that might convey to her acquaintances something of the reckless pace of that society to which she aspired. "Foster would go down to the market—such a bore when I wanted to get home in time to dinner. The Lesters were coming in afterwards to play bridge."
She peeled a long suede glove from her slim arm, rolled it into a ball and tossed it on to the sofa before she sat down by Mary and asked cheerfully:
"Well, and how's John?"
Mary with amused interest followed Sarah's disapproving glance across the room to Ursula's ankles. When Mrs. Foster Robson sat down the sheath-like skirt below her fur coat slid almost up to her knees. Ursula, looking up too, caught Sarah's critical glance. With an impish gesture she thrust forward a little both her disgraceful legs and turned to Mary vivaciously.