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which brought his profile into relief. “Why should he come back here, where every second person has some fresh scandalous theory to account for the time he was away? Burlingham’s motive is plain enough. He knows what I think of him, and in his own vulgar parlance, he would like to score me off. But what is Edward’s motive—and what is yours? I tell you, I won’t have it, and if he comes here, you must go!”
    The last word was almost shouted. To anyone who did not know him very well indeed the scene would have been a surprising one. Emmeline was not surprised. This slipping of control—she had seen it happen before. Quite suddenly, as it had happened now—when a dog with which he was playing had snapped—when a horse had put his foot in a hole and let him down—when he had done something which he did not care to have known and was confronted with the consequences. She had always known that under an appearance of coolness and reserve there was something in Arnold that was unstable, something which under pressure was liable to slip. She sat looking at him now, and wondered what the pressure might be.
    For his part, Arnold was aghast. The interview had got completely out of hand. He was saying all the things he had not meant to say. They burned at the back of his mind, but he had not meant to give them words. He had intended to be calm, reasonable, and dignified. He was engaging a new gardener, he required the lodge, he was reluctantly compelled to ask Emmeline to make other arrangements. There was not to have been the most distant allusion to Edward. Impossible now to revert to the calmly ordered plan.
    Emmeline looked at him, her eyes very blue above the faded cotton smock, and said,
    “Why are you afraid of Edward coming here?”
    CHAPTER VII
    Susan walked back from the shop with her postcards and a present of tomatoes for Emmeline. “My own growing,” Mrs. Alexander had told her. “And I don’t know that I ought to say so, but the plants come from Mr. Fullerby. Wonderful successful he have always been with the tomatoes up at the Hall— won all the prizes with them at the Embank Shows. Pity he’s leaving.”
    “Oh, is he?”
    “Well, you won’t say I said so, but I did hear tell as he was. Seems he and Mr. Arnold don’t rightly get on together. And maybe he won’t be sorry. He’s got his house, and there’ll be the old age pension, and if he wants to do a bit of jobbing work, there’s Miss Blake and Dr. Croft, both of them would be glad enough to have him in by the day. It’s Mr. Arnold will be finding out as he’s made a mistake to my way of thinking. But that’s just between you and me.”
    Susan picked up the bag of tomatoes, but Mrs. Alexander had by no means done.
    “That William Jackson will be leaving too, Miss Susan—I don’t know whether you’ve heard. Got his notice yesterday, so 1 heard tell. I always did say he’d go too far one day. In the Lamb or over at Embark every night till closing time, and getting to work late in the morning. A dreadful time Annie has with him, poor thing. And what she wanted to take him for, goodness knows. Twenty years she was, with your Aunt Lucy —went to her at fourteen. And then to go and marry a good-for-nothing like William Jackson that was after her savings and the money Miss Lucy left her! Ten years younger than her if he was a day!”
    Susan remembered William Jackson very well—one of the under gardeners at the Hall. She remembered him as a boy, red-haired and ferrety-faced. She had never liked him very much. Annie had been a fool to marry him. Aunt Lucy would never have let her do it. She hoped things were not as bad as Mrs. Alexander made out, but when she said so there was a shake of the head.
    “Oh, my dear, no! Poor Annie, she’s nothing but a wreck. And stuck away in that lonely cottage on the other side of the splash! No wonder they got it cheap! Downright dangerous going over those stepping-stones after dark or when it rains heavy.