Joanna, in the pantry, rolled back her sleeves, turned on the hot water, and set herself the unnecessary task of washing up. The dishes might quite as well have been left for the housemaid whose day out it was. But if Juley saw them she was sure to slink in later and do them herself. It was a provoking piece of knowledge, and the daughter, as she rinsed the cups and saucers, stared tensely out between the bars of the pantry window at the familiar, darkening slope of the back-green. There at the top was the wall along which she had so often raced; and in the angle of the wall was a disused ashpit, which at eight years old it had been her dream to turn into a little house for herself and Cousin Gerald. True she had taken no practical steps towards making it habitable, but the picture had so persisted in her mind that for many months she had not been able to pass a piece of coal in the street, or a stray potato, without picking it up. At once she had seen herself in her tiny house, bending over the fire, and cooking the loved one’s supper, while he praised her for her thrift.

And there in another corner of the wall was the carpentry shed, which looked sad since Sholto’s departure to a farm in the Lothians where he was learning stock-breeding. Joanna wished that Sholto could have stayed at home instead of Linnet. She and Linnet depressed each other; and the sister felt a kind of horror at seeing her own faults so clearly emphasized in her brother. She was ignorant of the real current of his life, and, in all but superficial ways, the two had come to avoid each other, seeking help outside in different directions.

Suddenly the tears started to Joanna’s eyes, and her high-strung fury changed to simple dreariness. Through these childish memories called forth by the sight of the back-green, and these thoughts of the nearer past, she had completed a circle of emotion. Once more she was confronted by her immediate trouble, the trouble concerning her mother. And for a moment she tasted despair.

Almost three years, now, she had been at home; and it had come to this. She had got no farther than this in fulfilling her dream of daughterhood by the fish-ponds of Vallombrosa. In practice she could not be the daughter of these dreams. Still less could she be the daughter her mother so passionately wanted. Why was it? Many times she had asked herself that question, and now she stumbled against it again. She loved her mother: her mother loved her. The dream at Vallombrosa had at least had that much of truth. And all the time in Florence she had known herself spiritually involved with her mother in some inexplicable way. Then why, when they were under the same roof, was there this unending conflict between them? Whose fault was it?