How queer and disagreeable she had been that very morning--angry with him because he had gone out to hear what all the row was about, and even more angry when he had come back and said nothing, because he thought it would annoy her to hear about it! Meanwhile, Mrs.Bunting forced herself to go down again into the kitchen, and as she went through into the low, whitewashed place, a tremor of fear, of quick terror, came over her.

She turned and did what she had never in her life done before, and what she had never heard of anyone else doing in a kitchen.

She bolted the door.
But, having done this, finding herself at last alone, shut off from everybody, she was still beset by a strange, uncanny dread.

She felt as if she were locked in with an invisible presence, which mocked and jeered, reproached and threatened her, by turns.
Why had she allowed, nay encouraged, Daisy to go away for two days?
Daisy, at any rate, was company--kind, young, unsuspecting company.
With Daisy she could be her old sharp self.

It was such a comfort to be with someone to whom she not only need, but ought to, say nothing.