SUPPER with Lisa and Grandfather was not the ordeal I had feared it might be. The old man was in excellent spirits and, though he was in something of a 'do you remember' vein, and Lisa's eyes, under their lowered lids, watched us both over-anxiously, it went off smoothly enough, with no hitch that I could see. Con wasn't there. It was light late, and he was at work long hours in the hayfield while the weather lasted. Shortly after supper Grandfather went into the office to write letters, and I helped Lisa wash up. Mrs. Bates went off at five, and the girl who helped in the kitchen and dairy had gone home when the milking was over. Lisa and I worked in silence. I was tired and preoccupied, and she must have realised that I didn't want to talk. She had made no further attempt to force a tete-a-tete on me, and she didn't try to detain me when, soon after nine o'clock, I went up to my room. I sat there by the open window, with the scent from the climbing roses unbearably sweet in the dusk, and my mind went round and round over the events of the day like some small creature padding its cage.
