'Come away.

Let's go to bed and leave the horrid cats with the hateful cow.

Perhaps somebody will eat somebody else.

And serve them right.' They did not go to bed, but they had a shivering council in the drawing-room, which smelt of soot--and, indeed, a heap of this lay in the fender.

There had been no fire in the room since mother went away, and all the chairs and tables were in the wrong places, and the chrysanthemums were dead, and the water in the pot nearly dried up.
Anthea wrapped the embroidered woolly sofa blanket round Jane and herself, while Robert and Cyril had a struggle, silent and brief, but fierce, for the larger share of the fur hearthrug.
'It is most truly awful,' said Anthea, 'and I am so tired.