"Didn't he come to help you down? There now! Well, he must be up in fold yard. You'd better go and get your wet things off. Go on. Take her up, Connie. Polly go and help carry Muriel's bag. Connie, get a dry pair o' stockings on for Heaven's sake. We can't have you catching cold, at all events." This with an uncontrollable wink at Muriel.
"When did Ben go out?" asked Connie stubbornly, ignoring her mother-in-law's injunctions.
"I don't know. When did he go, Mat?"
"Half an hour. He went to help Sam." Alice the land girl raised her face for a minute from her crochet to give her information, then thrust it down again. It was a thin, freckled face, with long fair lashes and a sharp up-tilted chin. Muriel found herself standing and facing Alice, while the rain dripped from her coat on to the white scoured floor.
"Go along with you now, messing up my floor!" cried Mrs. Todd, and shooed them vigorously from the kitchen.
"Well," remarked Connie, as they stood together at last in the large square room to which she had brought Muriel. "And what do you think of it all?"
Muriel looked round the bare walls, papered with a grotesquely botanical pattern and texts on strips of cardboard. The wind blew the texts backwards and forwards against the wall. It drove the lace window-curtains out into the room, and sent the carpet rippling in long waves across the floor. Through the window she could see nothing but a veil of twilight rain.
"How can I say what I think of it till I've seen some more?" she temporized, pulling off her wet coat and pushing the hair out of her eyes. "It's all frightfully different from what I expected. The front of the house is so grim, and yet, when you come to the back and see all those jolly people—— They seem to enjoy life, Connie. And then Mrs. Todd. She may be a bit of a Tartar, but I like her eyes. And then, there's Ben's father, and old Mrs. Todd, aren't there?"
Connie laughed bitterly, "Oh yes. There's my respected father-in-law and old Mrs. Todd. I wonder if you'll like her eyes?"
"Why not? Oh, Connie, you ought to take your wet things off. Now, at once."