"Ham, please—a very little," she said.
"Muriel's lost her appetite because she hasn't had a letter too," jeered Dolly.
Alice said nothing. She lifted her heavy-lidded eyes to Ben's red face and sat watching him. Ben bent his head above his cup, drinking great gulps of tea.
"I found an old ewe on her back i' forty acre," he remarked to change the subject.
"Not one o' the cross-breds?" asked Mat with interest.
"Or was it our old friend Agatha?" interposed Gertie.
"Agatha? Who was Agatha?" asked Muriel. Her head ached and she wondered why Connie did not come downstairs, but she knew that tea-time at Thraile was a convivial meal and that "moping" was against the rules.
Dolly explained to her with avidity. "Last spring at Follerwick Camp an old bird called Agatha Anderson brought a concert affair down to give improving music to the fellows. You never saw such an old geezer! She had sort of woolly white curls round a long solemn face, just like a sheep. Well, one night Connie was coming back from Follerwick and right halfway across the moors she heard a sheep bleating, for all the world just like old Agatha. It had got strayed and hurt its leg, and was sort of huddled on a bank like the old platform. So she got up and brought it along with her and we called it Agatha."
"Brought it home? All by herself? Wasn't it heavy?" asked Muriel without interest. Surely Connie had had time now to do her hair. Wasn't she feeling well? Muriel knew how much she hated those Thraile meals. Perhaps at the last moment she had taken fright.
Polly was giggling. "By herself? I ask you? Our Con walk home from Follerwick by herself? Not 'arf! Ben, you were with her, weren't you, when she found Agatha?"