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would stop her when she had cried enough.
    Julia let her cry, not touching her except that she left her hand in Ellie’s—not speaking, but just being there. All their life Julia had been there. That meant security for Ellie. It was always Julia who led and Ellie who followed, Julia who dragged her into scrapes and then miraculously got her out of them again. Somehow deeply, despairingly, Ellie clung to the idea that Julia could get her out of this, which wasn’t a scrape but the threatening of everything she cared for. Even as the tears ran down and soaked her pillow, she began to feel warm waves of comfort coming from Julia.
    Presently Julia’s voice came to her, warm too, and deep.
    “Ellie, you’ve cried enough.”
    “I expect—I have—”
    “Then stop! Have you got a handkerchief?”
    Ellie said, “Yes,” on a sob. She let go of Julia, felt under her pillow, and blew her nose.
    “Now don’t cry any more. You’d better tell me what it’s all about.”
    There was another sob, and a big one.
    “It’s Ronnie!”
    “He might be dead, and he isn’t,” said Julia. “Suppose you think about that and stop crying.”
    “I know—it’s wicked of me, isn’t it?”
    “Idiotic!” said Julia.
    Ellie began to feel better. There is something extraordinarily reassuring about being told that your fears are idiotic. She felt for Julia’s hand again, and found it comforting and strong.
    “I expect I am. But Matron says he’ll never get better where he is, and I’m so frightened Lois won’t have him here.”
    “She won’t if you’re frightened. The more you’re frightened of people like Lois, the more they trample.”
    Ellie caught her breath.
    “I know. But I can’t help it—I am frightened.”
    “It’s fatal,” said Julia.
    Ellie clung to her hand.
    “It’s no good saying things like that. I can’t help it—it’s the way I’m made. She’s a trampler, and I’m a doormat, and she’ll go on wiping her feet on me until I end up like Minnie, only not half so good.”
    “She will if you let her,” said Julia.
    “I can’t stop her. But I’m going to speak to Jimmy tomorrow—not that it will do any good—”
    “I don’t know—it might. I could speak to him, too, and— perhaps Antony. Between us we might get him to the point of remembering that it’s his house, and that if he wants to have Ronnie here it’s his business.”
    Ellie said in an extinguished voice,
    “You don’t know Lois—she’d get round him somehow— she always does.”
    “Well, I think we’ll have a go at it.”
    She felt rather than knew that Ellie was trembling.
    “It won’t be any good—she gets her own way. You know old Mrs. Marsh—”
    “What has she got to do with it?”
    “I’m telling you. When her son came home from India she just didn’t know how to be happy enough, and he was quite good to her in his stupid fat way.”
    “Oh, he wasn’t as bad as that—I rather liked Joe Marsh.”
    Ellie pulled at her hand.
    “He’s got fatter and stupider. And he’s married an odious girl from Crampton—as hard as nails—she really is. Lois has her up here to sew. Honestly, she’s a most frightful girl. You should hear Manny on the subject.”
    “I probably shall.”
    “Well, this horrible Gladys had made up her mind from the beginning that she was going to get rid of Mrs. Marsh, and she’s done it. With her stiff leg, she can’t take a regular job, but she did things like minding babies while the mothers went to the cinema, and she liked doing it. And it was her cottage, where she’d lived ever since she married Joe’s father, and that beast of a girl just pushed her out of it and got her taken away to the institute.”
    There was a little pause before Julia said,
    “What has that got to do with Lois?”
    The answer came in a breathless hurry.
    “Lois put it into her head, and backed her up. Manny’s raging. The Marshes are some sort of cousins—”
    “Does Jimmy know?”
    “I don’t