1
"WHERE'S Elizabeth?" asked Mrs. Ogden curiously. "Have you two
quarrelled at last?"
Joan did not answer; she went on dusting the drawing-room mechanically;
the servant had left and she and her mother were alone.
"I must go and put the meat in the oven," she said, leaving the room.
She put the joint in the oven and, turning to the sink, began peeling
potatoes; then she rinsed them and put them to boil. The breakfast
things were waiting to be washed up; an incredible lot of them for two
people to have used, Joan thought. She hated the feeling of cold grease
on her fingers; she could not find the mop and the skummed water crept
up her bare wrists. But much as she detested this washing-up process,
she prolonged it intentionally--it was something to do.
The potatoes boiled over; she moved the saucepan to a cooler spot and,
finding a broom, swept the kitchen. Where was Elizabeth? She had left
Seabourne for London; so much she had learnt from the porter at the
station, but where was she now? It was a week since they had quarrelled,
but it seemed like years. And Elizabeth did not write; she must be too
angry, too bitterly disillusioned! She fetched the dust-pan and took up
the dust; it lay in great unsightly flakes where she had swept it from
corners neglected by the discontented maid. Elizabeth had sacrificed all
the best years of her life for this, to be deserted, left in the end;
she had offered all that she had to give, and she, Joan, had spurned it,
hurled it back in her face--in Elizabeth's face!