he wanted to escort them over Trewinnard Sands, or worst
of all, had he invited her to sit beside him on his Sunday drives to
preach at distant chapels. He did not even bother her to come and hear
him preach in Trewinnard Free Church. Yet as the weeks went by, Jenny
came to think that he regarded her more than she thought at first. He
often seemed to know where she had been without being informed. When she
complained about Old Man Veal's spying on her, Zachary laughed oddly,
not much annoyed presumably by his servant's indiscretion. Jenny tried
sometimes to imagine what Trewinnard would have been like without her
sister. The fancy made her shudder. With May, however, it was like a
rather long, pleasantly dull holiday.

February brought fair days, scattered shining celandines like pieces of
gold over the garden beds, set the stiff upright daffodil buds drooping
and was all too soon driven out by the bleakest March that was ever
known, a fierce, detestable month of withering east winds, of starved
primroses, and dauntless thrushes singing to their nests in the shaken
laurustinus. Jenny began to hate the country itself now, when all she
could see of it was savage and forbidding as the people it bred.

In the middle of this gray and blasted month, Jenny became aware that
she was going to have a baby. This discovery moved her principally by a
sudden revival of self-consciousness so acute that she could scarcely
compel herself to break the news even to May. It seemed such an absurd
fact when she looked across the table at Zachary somberly munching his
pasty. She could hardly bear to sit at meals, dreading every whisper and
muffled giggle from the lower end of the table. Although the baby would
not arrive till September, and although she tried to persuade herself
that it was impossible for anyone to discern her condition, her own
knowledge of it dismayed her.

"But it'll be nice to have a baby," said May.

"What, in this unnatural house? I _don't_ think. Oh, May, whatever shall
I do? Can't I go away to have it?"

"Why don't you ask him?" suggested May.

"Don't be silly, how can I tell _him_ anything about it?"

"He's got to know some time," May pointed out.

"Yes, but not yet. And then you can tell the old woman and she can tell
him, and I'll hide myself up in the bedroom for a week. Fancy all the
servants knowing. What a dreadful thing! Besides, it hurts."

"Well, it's no use for you to worry about that part of it n