A day of fitful sunshine and blustering wind: white and grey clouds were scarcely moving, high overhead, but the bare trees round the house swayed and shook and there were swift whirlpools of straw in the stable yard.
Ben changed from the Sunday suit he had worn at the inquest and went about his duties.
Thunderclap, too, had been kicked yesterday and was very slightly lame in the off fore.
Brenda took off her hat and threw it down on a chair in the hall.
“Nothing to say, is there?”
“There's no need to talk.”
“No.
I suppose there'll have to be a funeral.”
“Well, of course.”
“Yes; tomorrow?”
She looked into the morning room.
“They've done quite a lot, haven't they?”
All Brenda's movements were slower than usual and her voice was flat and expressionless.
She sank down into one of the armchairs in the centre of the hall, which nobody ever used. She sat there doing nothing.
Tony put his hand on her shoulder but she said
“Don't,” not impatiently or nervously but without any expression.
Tony said,
“I'll go and finish those letters.”
“Yes.”
“See you at luncheon.”
“Yes.”
She rose, looked round listlessly for her hat, found it and went very slowly upstairs, the sunlight through the stained glass windows glowing and sparkling all about her.
In her room she sat on the window seat, looking out across the meadows and dun ploughland, the naked tossing trees, the church towers, the maelstroms of dust and leaf which eddied about the terrace below; she still held her hat and fidgeted with her fingers on the brooch which was clipped to one side of it.
Nanny knocked at the door and came in, red eyed.
“If you please, my lady, I've been going through John's things.
There's this handkerchief doesn't belong to him.”
The heavy scent and crowned cypher at its corner proclaimed its origin.
“I know whose it is.
I'll send it back to her.”
“Can't think how it came to be there,” said nanny.
“Poor little boy. Poor little boy,” said Brenda to herself, when nanny had left her, and gazed out across the troubled landscape.
“I was thinking about the pony, sir.”
“Oh yes, Ben.”
“Will you want to be keeping her now?”
“I hadn't thought … no, I suppose not.”
“Mr. Westmacott over at Restall was asking about her.
He thought she might do for his little girl.”
“Yes.”
“How much shall we be asking?”
“Oh, I don't know … whatever you think is right.
“She's a good little pony and she's always been treated well.
I don't think she ought to go under twenty-five quid, sir.”
“All right, Ben, you see about it.”
“I'll ask thirty, shall I, sir, and come down a bit.”
“Do just what you think best.”
“Very good, sir.”
At luncheon Tony said,
“Jock rang up.
He wanted to know if there was anything he could do.”
“How sweet of him.