Loving, Living, Party Going

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Authors: Henry Green
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fresh.' Her voice was thick with love. She shut the door.
    'Oh these long spaces,' she exclaimed as she came back.
    'This place won't ever be the same, not since Mr Eldon left us,' Miss Burch began again. 'I said it over his open grave and I don't care who hears me this minute. With Raunce let loose without check about the house there's no saying what we'll come to. And there's the trouble of his morning tea. He will insist on one of my girls fetching it. They won't even tell me which one of them it is but I keep watch. She's Edith though I told Mrs Tennant different by being mistaken at the time. What I say is who's to answer for it when he gets up to his games with her in the bedroom. Tormenting a girl till she faints will be child's play Mrs Welch.'
    'It's the food,' Mrs Welch answered, 'though I do speak as shouldn't seein' as I occupy meself with the kitchen. They're starving over there my sister says in her letter she sent. If it wasn't for that I'd go tomorrer, I would straight. He's that thin.'
    'Nothing'll be like it was,' Miss Burch repeated. 'I said so at the time.'
    Mrs Welch had the last word. 'Not but what Albert makes a difference being a refugee like the Belgians we had in the last war,' she said. 'Yes 'e'll be a tie,' she ended, 'and he'll take feedin'.'
    But not more than half an hour after Miss Burch had left there fell another blow. Mrs Welch went into the larder for a last look before going to her room. While fixing a cheese cloth in front to hide the plucked peacock she chanced to regard the great jar where she kept her waterglass. With arms upraised in the gesture of a woman hanging out smalls she watched that jar with pursed lips. She called Albert.
    'Ever set eyes on that before?' she asked.
    'No'm I ain't,' he replied in the manner of Raunce's lad.
    'Ever been in this larder in your puff?'
    'No'm.'
    'You wouldn't tell me an untruth would yer?'
    'Oh no'm.'
    'Because what I 'ave to say to you is this: it's 'ighly dangerous that stuff is. A sup of that and it would be your lot d'you hear me?'
    'Yes'm.'
    'So you never seen it before?'
    'No'm.'
    'And you've not even been in this place? Is that right?'
    'Yes'm.'
    'All right then and I don't want to hear any more. But if you so much as breathes a word of what 'as just passed I'll tan the 'ide clean off your back you little poulterer you h'understand?'
    'Yes'm.' He turned, ran out.
    Then high shrieking giggles came faint with distance from without. Mrs Welch moved over to perforated iron which formed a wall of the larder, advanced one eye to a hole and grimly watched.
    The back premises of this grey Castle were on a vast scale. What she saw afar was Kate and Edith with their backs to her in purple uniforms and caps the colour of a priest's cassock. They seemed to be waiting outside O'Conor's lamp room. This was two tall Gothic windows and a pointed iron-studded door in a long wall of other similar doors and windows topped by battlements above which was set back another wall with a greater number of windows which in its turn was terraced into the last storey that was almost all blind Gothic windows under a steep roof of slate. Mrs Welch after seeming to linger over the great shaft of golden sun which lighted these girls through parted cloud let a great gust of sigh and turned away saying,
    'Well if Aggie Burch can't hold 'em in leash it's none of my business, the pair of two-legged mice, the thieves,' she added.
    But as Edith reached for O'Conor's latch Kate screamed at her,
    'And what if there's a mouse?' Then Edie, hands to the side over a swelling heart, gave back, 'Oh love you can't say that to me,' and leant against the door post. 'That you can't say love,' she said, dizzy once more all of a sudden.
    'Aw come on I only meant it for a game.'
    'Oh Kate.'
    'You're soft that's what it is dear.'
    'Not after what come to pass this very morning you didn't ought.'
    'Why see who's brought 'erself to have a peek at him,' Kate said of a moulting peacock which head

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