The Three Sisters | Page 8

creature in doubt as to its
way. She decided to make for the bureau by rounding the roll-top desk
on the far side, thus approaching her master from behind.
"What are you doing?" said the Vicar. "I said, Put it down here."
Essy turned again and came forward, tilting the plate a little in her
nervousness. The large blue eyes, the stern voice, fascinated her,

frightened her.
The Vicar looked at her steadily, remorselessly, as she came.
Essy's lowered eyelids had kept the stain of her tears. Her thick brown
hair was loose and rumpled under her white cap. But she had put on a
clean, starched apron. It stood out stiffly, billowing, from her waist.
Essy had not always been so careless about her hair or so fastidious as
to her aprons. There was a little strained droop at the corners of her
tender mouth, as if they had been tied with string. Her dark eyes still
kept their young largeness and their light, but they looked as if they had
been drawn tight with string at their corners too.
All these signs the Vicar noted as he stared. And he hated Essy. He
hated her for what he saw in her, and for her buxom comeliness, and
for the softness of her youth.
"Did I hear young Greatorex round at the back door this evening?" he
said.
Essy started, slanting her plate a little more.
"I doan knaw ef I knaw, sir."
"Either you know or you don't know," said the Vicar.
"I doan know, I'm sure, sir," said Essy.
The Vicar was holding out his hand for his glass of water, and Essy
pushed the plate toward him, so blindly and at such a perilous slant that
the glass slid and toppled over and broke itself against the Vicar's chair.
Essy gave a little frightened cry.
"Clever girl. She did that on purpose," said the Vicar to himself.
Essy was on her knees beside him, picking up the bits of glass and
gathering them in her apron. She was murmuring, "I'll mop it oop. I'll
mop it oop."

"That'll do," he said roughly. "That'll do, I tell you. You can go."
Essy tried to go. But it was as if her knees had weights on them that
fixed her to the floor. Holding up her apron with one hand, she clutched
the arm of her master's chair with the other and dragged herself to her
feet.
"I'll mop it oop," she repeated, shamefast.
"I told you to go," said the Vicar.
"I'll fetch yo anoother glass?" she whispered. Her voice was hoarse
with the spasm in her throat.
"No," said the Vicar.
Essy slunk back into her kitchen with terror in her heart.

X
_"Attacca subito l'Allegro."_
Alice had fallen on it suddenly.
"I suppose," said Mary, "it's a relief to her to make that row."
"It isn't," said Gwenda. "It's torture. That's how she works herself up.
She's playing on her own nerves all the time. If she really could
play----If she cared about the music----If she cared about anything on
earth except----"
She paused.
"Molly, it must be awful to be made like that."
"Nothing could be worse for her than being shut up here."
"I know. Papa's been a frightful fool about her. After all, Molly, what

did she do?"
"She did what you and I wouldn't have done."
"How do you know what you wouldn't have done? How do I know? If
we'd been in her place----"
"If _I'd_ been in her place I'd have died rather."
"How do you know Ally wouldn't have rather died if she could have
chosen? She didn't want to fall in love with that young ass, Rickards.
And I don't see what she did that was so very awful."
"She managed to let everybody else see, anyhow."
"What if she did? At least she was honest. She went straight for what
she wanted. She didn't sneak and scheme to get him from any other girl.
And she hadn't a mother to sneak and scheme for her. That's fifty times
worse, yet it's done every day and nobody thinks anything of it."
She went on. "Nobody would have thought anything as it was, if Papa
hadn't been such a frantic fool about it. It he'd had the pluck to stand by
her, if he'd kept his head and laughed in their silly faces, instead of
grizzling and growling and stampeding out of the parish as if poor Ally
had disgraced him."
"Well--it isn't a very pleasant thing for the Vicar of the parish----"
"It wasn't a very pleasant thing for any of us. But it was beastly of him
to go back on her like that. And the silliness of it! Caring so frightfully
about what people think, and then