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The beef, the cider, the cheese, the bread, the pickles—what else? Lettuce! Yes, and it wasn’t washed, and Bowden loved his lettuce. But she couldn’t wait—she couldn’t! Perhaps he’d forget it—if she put some cream out! From the cool, dark dairy, down the little stone passage, she fetched the remains of the scalded cream.

“Watch the cat, Missis Bowden!” And she ran up the wriggling narrow stairs.

The room she slept in was like a ship’s cabin—no bigger. She drew the curtain over the porthole-like window, tore off her things and flung them on the narrow bed. This was her weekly change. There was a hole in her undergarment, and she tore it wider in her hurry. ‘I won’t have time for a good wash,’ she thought. Taking her one towel, she damped it, rubbed it over her, and began to dress furiously. The church bell had begun its dull, hard single chime. The little room was fiery hot, and beads of sweat stood on the girl’s brow. Savagely she thought: ‘Why can’t I have time to be cool, like Molly Winch?’ A large spider, a little way out from one corner of the ceiling, seemed watching her, and she shuddered. She couldn’t bear spiders—great hairy things! But she had no time to stretch up her hand and kill it. Glancing through a chink left by the drawn curtain to see whether Ned had come down into the yard, she snatched up her powder puff—precious possession, nearest approach to gentility—and solemnly rubbed it over face and neck. She wouldn’t shine, anyway! Under her Sunday hat, a broad-brimmed straw, trimmed with wide-eyed artificial daisies, she stood a moment contemplating her image in a mirror the size of her two hands. The scent of the powder, as of gone-off violets, soothed her nerves. But why was her hair so fine that it wouldn’t stay in place? And why black, instead of goldeny brown like Molly Winch’s hair? Her lip drooped, her eyes looked wide and mournful in the glass. She snatched up her pair of dirty white cotton gloves, took her prayer-book, threw open the door, and stood listening. Dead silence in the house. Ned Bowden’s room, his father’s, his old grandmother’s were up the other stairs. She would have liked him to see her coming down—like what the young men did in the magazines, looking up at the young ladies beautiful and cool, descending slowly. But would he look at her when he had his best on, going to Molly Winch? She went down the wriggling staircase. Gnats were still dancing outside the porch, ducks bathing and preening their feathers in sunlight which had lost all sting. She did not sit down for fear of being caught too obviously waiting, but stood changing from tired foot to foot, while the scent of powder mingled queerly with the homely odour of the farmyard and the lingering perfume of the hay stacked up close by. The bell stopped ringing. Should she wait? Perhaps he wasn’t going to church at all; just going to sit with Molly Winch, or to walk in the lanes with her. Oh, no! That Molly Winch was too prim and proper; she wouldn’t miss church! And suddenly something stirred within the girl. What would she not miss for a walk in the lanes with Ned? It wasn’t fair! Some people had everything! The sound of heavy boots from stair to stair came to her ears, and more swiftly than one would have thought natural to that firm body she sped through the yard and passed through the door in its high wall to the field path. Scarcely more than a rut, it was strewn with wisps of hay, for they had not yet raked this last field, and the air smelled very sweet. She dawdled, every sense throbbing, aware of his approach behind her, its measured dwelling on either foot which no Bowden could abandon, even when late for church. He ranged up; his hair was greased, his square figure stuffed handsome into board-like Sunday dittoes. His red face shone from soap, his grey eyes shone from surplus energy. From head to foot he was wonderful. Would he pass her or fall in alongside? He fell into step. The girl’s heart thumped, her cheeks burned under the powder, so that the scent thereof was released. Young Bowden’s arm, that felt like iron, bumped her own, and at the thrill which went through her she half-closed her eyes.