dreadful, unresponsive silence of the sheeted figure, lying in the
shabby little bedroom they had shared together, brought home to her the
significance of death.

She had not cried, as most children of eight would have done, but she
had suffered in a kind of frozen silence, incapable of any outward
expression of grief.

"Unfeelin', I call it!" declared the woman who lived on the same floor
as the Tennants, and who had attended at the doctor's behest, to
a friend and neighbour who was occupied in boiling a kettle over a
gas-ring. "Must be a cold-'earted child as can see 'er own mother lyin'
dead without so much as a tear." She sniffed. "'Aven't you got that cup
o' tea ready yet? I can allus drink a cup o' tea after a layin'-out."

Sara had watched the two women drinking their tea with brooding eyes,
her small breast heaving with the intensity of her resentment. Without
being in any way able to define her emotions, she felt that there was
something horrible in their frank enjoyment of the steaming liquid,
gulped down to the cheerful accompaniment of a running stream of
intimate gossip, while all the time that quiet figure lay on the narrow
bed--motionless, silent, wrapped in the strange and immense aloofness of
the dead.

Presently one of the women poured out a third cup of tea and pushed
it towards the child, slopping in the thin, bluish-looking milk with a
generous hand.

"'Ave a cup, child. It's as good a drop o' tea as ever I tasted."