But the Vicar ignored Gwenda.
"You'll drink it, if I stand here all night," he said.
Alice struggled with a spasm in her throat. He held the glass for her
while she groped piteously.
"Oh, where's my hanky?"
With superhuman clemency he produced his own.
"It'll serve you right if I'm ill," said Alice.
"Come," said the Vicar in his wisdom and his patience. "Come."
He proffered the disgusting cup again.
"I'd drink it and have done with it, if I were you," said Mary in her
soft voice.
Mary's soft voice was too much for Alice.
"Why c-can't you leave me alone? You--you--beast, Mary," she sobbed.
And Mr. Cartaret began again, "Am I to stand here----"
Alice got up, she broke loose from them and left the room.
"You might have known she wasn't going to drink it," Gwenda said.
But the Vicar never knew when he was beaten.
"She would have drunk it," he said, "if Mary hadn't interfered."
* * * * *
Alice had not got the pneumonia that had killed John Greatorex. Such
happiness, she reflected, was not for her. She had desired it too
much.
But she was doing very well with her anaemia.
Bloodless and slender and inert, she dragged herself about the
village. She could not get away from it because of the steep hills
she would have had to climb. A small, unhappy ghost, she haunted the
fields in the bottom and the path along the beck that led past Mrs.
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