ing into her new, queer-smelling mourning handkerchief.

"But what else could we have done?" asked Constantia wonderingly. "We
couldn't have kept him, Jug--we couldn't have kept him unburied. At any
rate, not in a flat that size."

Josephine blew her nose; the cab was dreadfully stuffy.

"I don't know," she said forlornly. "It is all so dreadful. I feel we
ought to have tried to, just for a time at least. To make perfectly
sure. One thing's certain"--and her tears sprang out again--"father will
never forgive us for this--never!"

Chapter 3.VI.

Father would never forgive them. That was what they felt more than ever
when, two mornings later, they went into his room to go through
his things. They had discussed it quite calmly. It was even down on
Josephine's list of things to be done. "Go through father's things and
settle about them." But that was a very different matter from saying
after breakfast:

"Well, are you ready, Con?"

"Yes, Jug--when you are."

"Then I think we'd better get it over."

It was dark in the hall. It had been a rule for years never to disturb
father in the morning, whatever happened. And now they were going to
open the door without knocking even... Constantia's eyes were enormous at
the idea; Josephine felt weak in the knees.

"You--you go first," she gasped, pushing Constantia.

But Constantia said, as she always had said on those occasions, "No,
Jug, that's not fair. You're the eldest."

Josephine was just going to say--what at other times she wouldn't have
owned to for the world--what she kept for her very last weapon, "But
you're the tallest," when they noticed that the kitchen door was open,
and there stood Kate...

"Very stiff," said Josephine, grasping the doorhandle and doing her best
to turn it. As if anything ever deceived Kate!

It couldn't be helped. That girl was... Then the door was shut behind
them, but--but they weren't in father's room at all. They might have
suddenly walked through the wall by mistake into a different flat
altogether. Was the door just behind them? They were too frightened to
look. Josephine knew that if it was it was holding itself tight shut;
Constantia felt that, like the doors in dreams, it hadn't any handle
at all. It was the coldness which made it so awful. Or the
whiteness--which? Everything was covered. The blinds were down, a cloth
hung over the mirror, a sheet hid the bed; a huge fan of white paper
filled the fireplace. Constantia tim