She put it down quietly and slipped out of the room
without her customary "Anything more, Miss?" and "Good-night."
"What's the matter with Essy?" Gwenda said.
Nobody spoke but Alice who was saying that she didn't want her milk.
More than a year ago Alice had been ordered milk for her anaemia. She
had milk at eleven, milk at her midday dinner, milk for supper, and
milk last thing at night. She did not like milk, but she liked being
ordered it. Generally she would sit and drink it, in the face of
her family, pathetically, with little struggling gulps. She took a
half-voluptuous, half-vindictive pleasure in her anaemia. She knew that
it made her sisters sorry for her, and that it annoyed her father.
Now she declared that she wasn't feeling well, and that she didn't
want her milk.
"In that case," said Mr. Cartaret, "you had better go to bed."
Alice went, raising her white arms and rubbing her eyes along the
backs of her hands, like a child dropping with sleep.
One after another, they rose and followed her.
* * * * *
At the half-landing five steep steps in a recess of the wall led aside
to the door of Essy's bedroom. There Gwenda stopped and listened.
A sound of stifled crying came from the room. Gwenda went up to the
door and knocked.
"Essy, are you in bed?"
A pause. "Yes, miss."
"What is it? Are you ill?"
No answer.
"Is there anything wrong?"
A longer pause.
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