The eggs came from a distant cottage. There was no Sheila in sight. Janet sat down in the field, she had it to herself, the cows had been driven home. The grass was young and green, the buttercups shook pollen on to her frock, an ox-eye daisy and a head of clover were dividing the attention of a sleepy, already heavily laden bee. Janet saw these things, but with no pleasure. She was bitter, and it took the colour from the grass and flowers and sky. Sheila! Since the day Sheila was born she had been giving up something for her. “No, darling, Mum can’t play with you, she’s got to look after baby Sheila.” “I know you don’t care very much for pink, darling, but I do like to dress you two children alike, and Sheila looks such a duck in pink.” Her headmistress had said: “We rely on you, Janet, to coach Sheila in the evenings; she’s a lazy little creature, but there, I suppose one can’t have everything.” Can’t have everything! Sheila had very nearly had it. Janet’s precious spare evening hours, every shilling that could be screwed from her earnings, all the looks, all the admiration, and she had never grudged her any of it. Now this? “Surely,” she thought, thumping an impotent foot on the ground, “I needn’t give in to her over this! It isn’t even as if she wants it. She wanted to come here, she chose the place. Doing the housework and being the village beauty ought to be exactly her cup of tea.” But it was no good arguing with herself; Janet was incapable of not looking the truth in the face. Sheila wouldn’t do the housework. If her mother were not looked after she would die. “If Mum hadn’t said what she did I’d have come to the same conclusion myself in the end, I suppose. I’d have taken a bit of time over it, it’s so awfully disappointing. I do so want . . .” Janet was shy of tears. She seldom cried, and she certainly was not going to cry in front of Sheila, who would be coming along any minute now. To the left of the house across a field of mustard she could see a copse. Round the side of the house she would be out of sight of anyone coming up the main footpath. She had no idea if her mother could see her from the garden, and did not care very much if she did. She had reached that point when her throat ached so that she couldn’t swallow, and any cover would do so long as she was alone to sob undisturbed.