ey are."

"Father is dead against it."

George smiled, on the point of saying: 'That makes me feel it must be a
good thing!' But he subdued the impulse.

"I agree that we're bound by his absence not to further it actively.
Still Nollie knows his wishes, and it's up to her and no one else. After
all, she's no longer a child."

His advice was followed. But to write that polite letter, which said
nothing, cost Gratian a sleepless night, and two or three hours'
penmanship. She was very conscientious. Knowledge of this impending
visit increased the anxiety with which she watched her sister, but the
only inkling she obtained of Noel's state of mind was when the girl
showed her a letter she had received from Thirza, asking her to come back
to Kestrel. A postscript, in Uncle Bob's handwriting, added these words:

"We're getting quite fossilised down here; Eve's gone and left us again.
We miss you and the youngster awfully. Come along down, Nollie there's a
dear!"

"They're darlings," Noel said, "but I shan't go. I'm too restless, ever
since Daddy went; you don't know how restless. This rain simply makes me
want to die."

2

The weather improved next day, and at the end of that week harvest began.
By what seemed to Noel a stroke of luck the farmer's binder was broken;
he could not get it repaired, and wanted all the human binders he could
get. That first day in the fields blistered her hands, burnt her face
and neck, made every nerve and bone in her body ache; but was the
happiest day she had spent for weeks, the happiest perhaps since Cyril
Morland left her, over a year ago. She had a bath and went to bed the
moment she got in.

Lying there nibbling chocolate and smoking a cigarette, she luxuriated in
the weariness which had stilled her dreadful restlessness. Watching the
smoke of her cigarette curl up against the sunset glow which filled her
window, she mused: If only she could be tired out like this every day!
She would be all right then, would lose the feeling of not knowing what
she wanted, of being in a sort o of large box, with the lid slammed down,
roaming round it like a dazed and homesick bee in an overturned tumbler;
the feeling of being only half alive, of having a wing maimed so that she
could only fly a little way, and must then drop.

She slept like a top that night. But the next day's work was real
torture, and the third not much better. By the end of the week, however,
she was no long