Below stairs, Mrs. Brigg, who was afflicted with a
complaint that prompted her to perpetual anxious movement, laboured about
the kitchen, doing nothing in particular, among her pots and pans. The
occasional clatter of them mingled with the sound of the organ, and with
the suffocated note of Jessie, in a depressing symphony. The sun went in
again, and some dust, stirred into motion by a passing omnibus, floated
in through the half-open window and settled in a light film upon the
photograph of Marr. Presently the organ moved away, and faded gradually
in pert tunes down the street. Jessie's nervous system, no longer played
upon, ceased to spend its pain in sound, and a London silence fell round
the little room. Then, at length, Cuckoo shifted in her chair, stretched
her hands in her lap, and sat up slowly. The inward expression had not
faded from her eyes yet, for, leaning forward, she still stared blankly
before her, looking, as it seemed, straight at Marr's photograph.
Gradually she woke to a consciousness of what she was looking at, and
putting up one hand she took the photograph from its place, laid it in
her lap, and, bending down, gazed at it long and earnestly. Then she
shook her head as if puzzled.
"I don't know," she murmured; "I don't know.
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