very
weary. There was a despondent note in it, too, which surprised the man
standing in the kitchen. Excepting during the few moments, to him
intensely moving and solemn moments, when they had spoken of George
within a day or two of his return to Beechfield, he had always seen Betty
extraordinarily cheerful.

"You can go just as you are," he heard Timmy say eagerly. "You could
pretend you'd just been to a fancy ball as a cook!" He added,
patronizingly, "If you put on a clean apron, you'll look quite nice."

Radmore did not catch the answer, but he gathered that it was again in
the negative, and a moment later Timmy's little feet scampered up the
uncarpeted flight of stairs which led into the upper part of the house.

Walking forward, he quietly pushed open the scullery door, and for some
seconds he stood unseen, taking in the far from unattractive scene before
him.

The scullery of Old Place was a glorified kind of scullery, for, just
before the War, Janet had spent a little of her own money on "doing it
up." Since then she had often congratulated herself on the fact that in
the days when the process was comparatively cheap, she had had the
scullery walls lined five feet up with black and white tiles matching the
linoleum which covered the stone floor.

Against this background Betty Tosswill was now standing, a trim, neat
figure, in her pink cotton gown and big white apron. She was engaged in
washing, drying, and polishing the fine old table glass which had been
used that evening.

It was such a relief to her to be alone at last! For one thing, though
Timmy and Tom both loved her dearly, their love never suggested to them
that it must be disagreeable to her to hear them constantly bickering
the one with the other, and they would have been surprised indeed had
they known how their teasing squabbles had added to the strain and
fatigue of serving the elaborate dinner she had just cooked.

She felt spent, in body and in mind, and in the mood when a woman craves,
above all things, for solitude.

"Look here, Betty, can't I do anything to help?"

She started violently, and gave a little cry, while the stem of the
wine-glass she held in her hand snapped in two. But Radmore, to her
relief, did not notice the little accident.

"There isn't anything to do, thank you." She tried to speak composedly
and pleasantly. "I'm going to leave most of the washing-up to the woman
who comes in every morning to help us."

"Then w