Although there was no more mention of Mrs Flack, she was always there at Xanadu. Miss Hare could feel her presence. In certain rather metallic light, behind clumps of ragged, droughty laurels, in corners of rooms where dry rot had encouraged the castors to burst through the boards, on landings where wallpaper hung in drunken, brown festoons, or departed from the wall in one long, limp sheet Mrs Flack obtruded worst, until Miss Hare began to fear, not only for her companion and housekeeper, at the best of times a doubtful asset, but, what was far more serious, for the safety of her property. So far had Mrs Flack, through the medium of Mrs Jolley, insinuated herself into the cracks in the actual stone. Sometimes the owner of Xanadu would wake in her lumpy bed, and listen for the crash. Or would there be a mere dull, tremendous flump, as quantities of passive dust subsided? Either eventuality terrified Miss Hare. One night she got the hiccups, and the marble halls of Xanadu reverberated with the same distress. Glass tinkled as she wandered here and there, grazing with an arm or elbow. Lustre crashed somewhere in the drawing-room. "What are you up to, clumsy girl?" Mrs Jolley called. "Can't I leave you for two minutes?" Already she was coming. Mrs Jolley would appear at crucial moments, now from above, it seemed, her detached soles smacking marble. She was carrying a lamp, which flew through the darkness like a small bouquet of flowers. Mrs Jolley stood at last in the drawing-room holding her bunch of yellow flowers. "You are not to be trusted, you know," said the reliable housekeeper, catching sight of the glittery fragments of the silver-lustre jug. "Aren't they my own things?" the owner dared. "Oh, yes!" The housekeeper laughed. "They are your own things all right." "And no one will take them from me?" "Not till you have smashed them all to smithereens. Home, too, it looks like. What will you do then? Camp out under the bunya-bunya, and count the raindrops?" "I have the hiccups," said Miss Hare. "Or had, rather. I believe they have been cured." Mrs Jolley's little yellow bouquet shook. "It was the fright you got. You could set up and make your fortune, throwing junk at all the hiccuppers in creation." The darkness was reeling under the attacks of Mrs Jolley's mirth. Miss Hare, although cured of her hiccups, felt quite sick. "Mrs Jolley," she began, "your _friend__…" The formidable word seemed to thunder. But Mrs Jolley, wheezing inside her iron corset, had bent to retrieve the fragments of jug, and was making an icy music with them, as she swept them together over the floor. It was probable she had not heard the word. Nor did Miss Hare know how she would have continued if her housekeeper had. For, although Mrs Flack pervaded, she was nothing tangible. Then Mrs Jolley straightened up. "You will not leave me?" Miss Hare asked. The woman stood. It was as if she had discovered a swelling on her lip. It was most embarrassing. "In the dark, I mean," Miss Hare explained. "You was here before, wasn't you?" Now Mrs Jolley's voice quite clattered. "Having the hiccups. And before that. And before that." She appeared annoyed. "Oh, yes," said Miss Hare. "And shall be. If I am allowed. I shall throw back the shutter. I had forgotten the moon. I shall sit for a little. Quietly." Soon there were a few planks of moonlight, in which she continued to rock long after Mrs Jolley had withdrawn. For much longer than she had anticipated, the wanderer kept afloat, and by extraordinary managment of the will always just avoided bumping against the shores of darkness. Other shapes threatened, though, some of them dissolving at the last moment into good, some she was able to identify unhesitatingly as evil. In the misty silence, the two women, her tormentors-in-chief, let down their hair and covered their faces with veils of it. Their words were hidden from her. On the whole, she realized, she was unable to distinguish motives unless allowed to read faces. Towards morning Mrs Jolley appeared in the flesh and wrenched the little tiller from the cold hands. As she joggled the boat in anger, dewdrops fell distinctly from all its protuberances. "You do hate me," said Miss Hare, observing evil in person. The rescuer's face was quivering with exasperation. The mouth had aged without its teeth, and should have proclaimed innocence, but words flickered almost lividly from between the gums. "I am only thinking of your health," Mrs Jolley hissed. "I am responsible in a way, though do not know what possessed me to take it on." Then evil is also good, Miss Hare understood. "But you have not yet enjoyed all the pleasure of tormenting me," she was moved to remark. "I will not waste my breath arguing with loopy Louie," replied Mrs Jolley, leading her charge towards the stairs. At breakfast each of them treated the incident as if it had not occurred. It was a brisk morning. It seemed to Miss Hare that the light illuminated. She herself was exuberant with knowledge. She radiated discoveries. "I see," she said, over the crispies, "I am wrong about Xanadu. To be afraid. I shall not fear if it is taken away, because my experience will remain." "Experience!" exploded Mrs Jolley. "What have _you__ experienced?" "For many years, when there were people here, I sat under the table, amongst the legs, and saw an awful lot happen." "There's always plenty happens in a big house, but it's only the servants that sees that. You were sitting on the same cushions as your mum and dad." "I was the servant of the servants. I was a very ugly little girl. The maids would read me their letters, because I hardly existed, and sometimes would allow me to fetch them things, especially before they were going out, in their big pink hats, to meet their friends." Mrs Jolley breathed on nonsense. "Better eat up your crispies," she advised. "But that is not the experience of which I wish to speak. Take water, for instance. If you are alone with it enough, you become like water. You enter into it." Mrs Jolley had got up and was throwing the crockery into the sink. The plates were falling dangerously hard, but somehow failed to break. "Whether this can count as my contribution," Miss Hare continued, "I still have to discover. Perhaps somebody will tell me. And show me at the same time how to distinguish with certainty between good and evil." Mrs Jolley's face, which was still eating, had become a series of lumps. Obviously she was not going to answer, and it was not only because her mouth was full. "For all I know, Xanadu, which I still can't help love, is evil itself." "It is that all right!" cried Mrs Jolley, gulping the rest of the crust that had been giving trouble. "Like certain things made of plastic," Miss Hare added. "Plastic is bad, bad!" Now she felt definitely stronger, and Mrs Jolley was resenting it. Soon afterwards the seeker went outside, temporarily fortified by her knowledge. Of course, she realized, too, the sad extent of her shortcomings, which were tingling, as always, in her fingertips. It was only natural, and soon became evident, that Mrs Jolley was preparing something, or a whole series of torments, as she ticked off the days. The housekeeper would stand for whole minutes in front of a calendar she had got from a grocer to rectify a deficiency, for Miss Hare herself had never stopped to think about time, let alone the days. "Who would ever have thought I had been here all that long," the housekeeper once remarked aloud. "_I__ should have thought!" Miss Hare laughed. "But it is none the less surprising." "It is because I have a conscience, " Mrs Jolley hinted. "I dare say it is," replied Miss Hare. "And am waiting for guidance." "I would guide you if I could," said Miss Hare, quite sincerely. "But you cannot tell other people." Then Mrs Jolley stirred up the dust, as she did frequently-her conscience made her-while achieving nothing by the act. "You know," said Miss Hare, "I think I am now strong enough if you decide to go to your friend." Mrs Jolley was all murmurs. Friendship, she said, sometimes involved a plunge. "Friendship is two knives," said Miss Hare. "They will sharpen each other when rubbed together, but often one of them will slip, and slice off a thumb." At that point Mrs Jolley flew into such a rage she tore down a curtain in the dining-room, and Miss Hare no longer minded. She sensed that for the moment she had the upper hand. Or was it that she, too, contained something evil which could take control at times? Some human element. Now she recalled, with nostalgia, occasions when she had lost her identity in those of trees, bushes, inanimate objects, or entered into the minds of animals, of which the desires were unequivocal, or honest. Depressed, if also enlightened, she was not altogether surprised at the incident by which Mrs Jolley became reinstated in her own esteem. One morning, rather fresh, because still early, the housekeeper had gone out into the yard, and was stamping about too much and too long to satisfy the listener. The latter was standing in a little scullery, in one corner of which she was able normally to feel at peace, in a scent of apples, sometimes a squeaking of mice, and always the broken light from an old, bulging cane blind. But on the present occasion her heart was dealing her blows as she listened to the dubious activities in the yard, and at last, clearly and unmistakably, the scrape of a spade over stone sent her rushing, tumbling, down short but sudden flights of steps, over interminable flags, past the smell of stale water, until she arrived ungainly and ashamed in the doorway which gave access to the yard. "Ah," she cried at once, "you have killed it!" What survived of her voice rasped her throat cruelly, and surprised the brash air of morning. "I'll say!" Mrs Jolley blurted. She was completely out of place in the yard, and knew it. Her hair had escaped into tails, her decent dress was disarranged, but the unusualness of the situation, together with her own inspired bravery, made her enjoy dislocation. Her smile, which should have appeared fiendish, was agreeable and innocent, as she stood looking down at the spade. Or snake. Of which the halves were still twitching. "You killed it!" Miss Hare protested and mourned. "I used to put out milk, and it would drink, and sometimes allow me to stand by, but I never quite succeeded in winning its confidence. There is something wrong with me," she said. Panting. "And so you killed the snake." "That is not killing," said Mrs Jolley, propping the spade. "That is ridding the world of something bad." "Who is to decide what is bad?" asked Miss Hare. At least she had been given the strength to bear what had happened, and in the yard-where so much else had taken place: the sacrifice of her poor goat, to say nothing of her father's unmentionable end. She stooped to pick up the limp pieces of snake. Mrs Jolley began to shriek and hold her hair. "It will bite you!" she cried. "They say their bite stays with them." Miss Hare's freckled, horrible hands looked so tender and ludicrous. Mrs Jolley fell to snickering, then to giggling. "Brave me!" She tittered. "How did I do it?" Nor did she watch to see how her employer disposed of the corpse. She was exhausted by her triumph. But, almost at once, began sulking again. Mrs Jolley would sulk for days, even forgetting she was a lady and a mother, until Miss Hare was tempted to ask, "Does Elma believe in plastic?" Or she would beg, "Tell me about the time, Mrs Jolley, that Merle gave the buffy for the high-up officials from the Customs, and the white sauce got burnt." She was truly interested, and would have loved also to see the officials sitting at their varnished desks during the hours of business, drinking milky tea. Or she would ask, "You have never told me-does Mr Apps wear a moustache?" Or: "I wonder whether I should be afraid to meet a stoker?" Mrs Jolley would not answer, because she was sulking, and Miss Hare was half ashamed for her own powers of emulating the cruelty of human beings. "It is I who am bad," she sighed half aloud. All the time the house was full of reverberations. The wind would tear through it when the women forgot to close the shutters, which was almost always now, with the result that leaves had begun to litter the brocade, and once the lunch-wrap of a picnicker or commercial traveller was found in an épergne. If it had not been for her stereoscopic memories, Miss Hare would have felt surprised and pained. Mrs Jolley said, "It is too much for me." As for the blowing paper, it was possible to roll that into a ball, which Miss Hare did, and threw it where it would not be seen. But all the time, it was obvious something must happen. Mrs Jolley was waiting for inspiration, Miss Hare for explanation, and to those who wait, it usually comes, in some form or another. In the housekeeper's case, it could have been that continued absence of material symbols had shaken her religious faith, thus causing a delay. Was it possible that the piles of purple brick to which she had been used to cling were as liable to crumble as the stones of Xanadu? This was too large, too unbelievable a bomb to receive into the ordered mind, and she thrust the possibility away from her. But bombs _aie__ unbelievable until they actually fall. Whether Mrs Jolley suspected this, or not, behind the trembling veil of her beliefs, she would open her prayer-book and search in vain for some efficacious prayer she might have overlooked. She would even invoke the image of her late husband, until remembering certain aspects of their