She banged the door.
"Good Lord, Muriel, how you startled me! What on earth are you doing?"
"I've just come in. I'm going up to change."
"Oh. Then I suppose that you heard."
"No. I didn't hear anything except that you were quarrelling, as usual."
She was not interested. She climbed the stairs wearily, dragging at the handrail, wondering why the last five steps were always so much steeper than the others. Then she told herself that she was only tired, and that she must pull herself together. A hot bath soothed her body and mind. She put out her blue poplin dress on to the bed, and a blue ribbon for her hair. While she was changing, Mrs. Hammond entered the room.
"I suppose that you've seen Connie. Now, isn't it too bad?"
"I don't know. What is it?"
It appeared to be a great many things. Mrs. Hammond had gone into Connie's room at midday, and found the bed unmade, and Connie reading a novel. When she had remonstrated, Connie just threw the counterpane above the chaos left by last night's slumber. And when Mrs. Hammond discovered this, and pointed out very seriously what a bad example it set the maids, Connie had said, "That's all we keep maids here for—to set them examples. Why should we keep a dog and bark ourselves? There's no room for three women in a house. You should have let me go to that chicken farm."
"It's all too bad," sighed her mother. "You don't know how she hurts me." Mrs. Hammond pushed back her tears with a small lacy handkerchief. Connie was her favourite daughter. She had tried to do her best for her. But where Arthur was possible though difficult to manage, Connie was quite beyond her. "Connie's so inconsiderate. I don't know what's happened to her lately. I've done my best. I'm sure that I've done my best for you both. And now she wants to go and work on the land at some horrid place in the North Riding called Thraile."