all looking sleepy.—Have a glass of claret Miriam before you go said Mrs. Philps. No thank you, said Miriam springing up and dancing about the room. Giddy girl, chuckled Mrs. Philps affectionately. Grace and Florrie fetched dust sheets from the hall cupboard and began spreading them over the furniture. Miriam pulled up in front of a large oil-painting over the sofa; its distances where a meadow stream that was wide in the foreground with a stone bridge and a mill-wheel and a cottage half hidden under huge trees, grew narrow and wound on and on through tiny distant fields until the scene melted in a soft toned mist, held all her early visits to the Brooms in the Banbury Park days before they had discovered that she did not like sitting with her back to the fire. She listened eagerly to the busy sounds of the Brooms. Someone had bolted the hall door and was scrooping a chair over the tiles to get up and put out the gas. Dust sheets were still being flountered in the room behind her. Grace’s arm came round her waist.—I’m so glad you’ve come sweet she said in her low steady shaken tones—So’m I said Miriam.—Isn’t that a jolly picture—Yes. It’s an awfully good one you know. It was one of papa’s—What’s O’Hara doing in the kitchen?—Taking Grace by the waist Miriam drew into the passage trying to prance with her down the hall. The little kitchen was obscured by an enormous clotheshorse draped with airing linen. She’s left a miserable fire, said Mrs. Philps from behind the clotheshorse—She hasn’t done the saucepans aunt scolded Florrie from the scullery—Never mind, we can’t have er down now. It’s neely midnight.
Miriam emerged smoothly into the darkness and lay radiant. There was nothing but the cool sense of life pouring from some inner source and the deep fresh spaces of the darkness all round her. Perhaps she had awakened because of her happiness … clear gentle and soft in a melancholy minor key a little thread of melody sounded from far away in the night straight into her heart. There was nothing between her and the sound that had called her so gently up from her deep sleep. She held in her joy to listen. There was no sadness in the curious sorrowful little air. It drew her out into the quiet neighbourhood …