-one of the maids--answered:

"The Missis's sister."

"They say she's got a baby."

"Never you mind what she's got."

Noel heard the man's laugh. It seemed to her the most odious laugh she
had ever heard. She thought swiftly and absurdly: 'I'll get away from
all this.' The window was only a few feet up. She got out on to the
ledge, let herself down, and dropped. There was a flower-bed below,
quite soft, with a scent of geranium-leaves and earth. She brushed
herself, and went tiptoeing across the gravel and the little front lawn,
to the gate. The house was quite dark, quite silent. She walked on, down
the road. 'Jolly!' she thought. 'Night after night we sleep, and never
see the nights: sleep until we're called, and never see anything. If
they want to catch me they'll have to run.' And she began running down
the road in her evening frock and shoes, with nothing on her head. She
stopped after going perhaps three hundred yards, by the edge of the wood.
It was splendidly dark in there, and she groped her way from trunk to
trunk, with a delicious, half-scared sense of adventure and novelty. She
stopped at last by a thin trunk whose bark glimmered faintly. She felt
it with her cheek, quite smooth--a birch tree; and, with her arms round
it, she stood perfectly still. Wonderfully, magically silent, fresh and
sweet-scented and dark! The little tree trembled suddenly within her
arms, and she heard the low distant rumble, to which she had grown so
accustomed--the guns, always at work, killing--killing men and killing
trees, little trees perhaps like this within her arms, little trembling
trees! Out there, in this dark night, there would not be a single
unscarred tree like this smooth quivering thing, no fields of corn, not
even a bush or a blade of grass, no leaves to rustle and smell sweet, not
a bird, no little soft-footed night beasts, except the rats; and she
shuddered, thinking of the Belgian soldier-painter. Holding the tree
tight, she squeezed its smooth body against her. A rush of the same
helpless, hopeless revolt and sorrow overtook her, which had wrung from
her that passionate little outburst to her father, the night before he
went away. Killed, torn, and bruised; burned, and killed, like Cyril!
All the young things, like this little tree.

Rumble! Rumble! Quiver! Quiver! And all else so still, so sweet and
still, and starry, up there through the leaves.... 'I can't bear it!'
she thought.