nd
cook and light fires and lay Osborn's breakfast-table.

After all, it was Osborn who broke the silence between them, sulkily.

"I should give yourself five more minutes; you'll freeze out there."

Marie turned round quickly and looked at his long, comfortable outline
under his pink quilt. She hesitated, then spoke in her natural voice,
which he was secretly relieved to hear:

"It's half-past six; I'll have to dress."

"Poor old girl!" Osborn mumbled from his pillow. After she had gone
quietly out, and he listened to the sounds of running water in the
bathroom, and after she had come back, and he watched her again, one
eye cocked furtively over the blankets, while she moved about quickly,
he thought and considered and argued with himself about her. But,
after all, she did as other women do, didn't she? She had a home and a
husband and child, and she was bound to look after them, wasn't she?
He gave her all he could, and sometimes it seemed to him--though he
didn't mean to grouse--that she might have managed better. His mother,
for instance, grown grey and quiet in the service of himself and his
father, had worked wonders with the limited family money.

Had she been still alive, she might have given Marie a few wrinkles,
perhaps....

There is little doubt that Mrs. Kerr the departed could have given her
young daughter-in-law a few wrinkles had she met her--wrinkles of the
most unprofitable kind upon her fair face; but as it was, Mrs. Kerr
senior lay quietly afar off from No. 30 Welham Mansions, impotent to
reform, and Osborn lay thinking his thoughts in silence while Marie,
having dressed to petticoat and camisole, wreathed up her long and
lustrous hair.

The baby sucked intermittently at his bottle.

When Marie had put on her blouse and skirt, and a pinafore to protect
them, she went out without further conversation. Osborn wondered a
little whether she sulked, but she was not sulking; she was only
occupied much as he was, in thinking and considering and arguing with
herself about him. She was modern enough to remain proud and critical
and impatient after domestic experiences which would have gone far
towards cowing the generation of women before her. Her mother had
bowed beneath such experiences without so much as an inquiry or
expostulation. As Marie hurried about with brush and duster, with
black-lead and fire-fuel, as she stood over the purring stove, and
watched toast and eggs and coffee come to their