"I didn't know Jack was going to work for you," she continued. "It isn't the first time you've done this sort of thing, you know. I can't let you go on working together because you obviously don't know how to treat a boy. And even if I take Jack away, you'll be up to the same tricks with some one else, sooner or later. So I'm afraid you'll have to go. I'm sorry—but I don't know what else to do. You shall have a week's wages, but I can't allow this sort of thing here, don't you see? Jack, come along with me and I'll give you something for your ear. No, don't cry, because you're not much hurt really, you know. I'm ashamed of you, Waite, and I hope you're ashamed of yourself. I shall tell Foreman and my husband of the step I have taken. You can consider yourself dismissed."
The man continued phlegmatically to throw turnips into the cart, his body swaying loosely from the hips as he stooped and lifted. He might never have heard Mary's voice, but as she went down the road she sighed, conscious that she had made another enemy. First Coast, now Waite....
The government of a kingdom was not always easy. Mary hated to be disliked. She loved to imagine herself the idolized champion of the poor and suffering, the serene mistress of bountiful acres, where the season was always harvest and the labourers worthy of their hire. Coast and Waite were somehow out of the picture.
Then she heard the squelch of Jack's boots on the road behind her. At least, in dismissing Waite, she had fulfilled her rôle as champion of the oppressed. She saw herself for a moment as she hoped Jack saw her, calm mistress of his destiny snatching him from peril, and she smiled again at the vision.
Then she wondered how John would take it when she told him she had dismissed the beast man. But even this, she decided, did not matter, and so went down to Anderby.
Chapter VIII
THE STRANGER AT THE CROSS-ROADS
Mary drove home from Hardrascliffe along a dark, wind-swept road. She had been busy all the afternoon helping Ursula to establish herself in the nursing-home where she was to await the arrival of her child.
Ursula was not an easy person to help. She had actually made Mary feel an interloper in the nursing-home she had visited all her life, by that air of off-hand familiarity with which she took possession of the whole staff. She had aroused all sorts of uncomfortable desires which Mary had thought were hidden deep beneath a weight of busy complacency.