Part II, Chapters 7–8: "The Horse Dealer's Daughter" by D.H. Lawrence

"Well, Mabel, and what are you going to do with yourself?" asked Joe, with foolish flippancy.

The three brothers and the sister sat round the desolate breakfast table, attempting some sort of desultory consultation.

She would have been good-looking, save for the impassive fixity of her face, "bulldog," as her brothers called it.

The young men watched with critical, callous look.

He had a sensual way of uncovering his teeth when he laughed, and his bearing was stupid.

They were tied head to tail, four of them, and they heaved along to where a lane branched off from the highroad, planting their great hoofs floutingly in the fine black mud, swinging their great rounded haunches sumptuously, and trotting a few sudden steps as they were led into the lane, round the corner.

And the cavalcade moved out of sight up the lane, the tail of the last horse, bobbed up tight and stiff, held out taut from the swinging great haunches as they rocked behind the hedges in a motionlike sleep.

Joe sprawled uneasily in his seat, not willing to go till the family conclave was dissolved.

He pushed his coarse brown moustache upwards, off his lip, and glanced irritably at his sister, who sat impassive and inscrutable.

"Go as a skivvy," Joe interpolated laconically.

Malcolm grinned fatuously.

"It's a knock-out, isn't it," said Joe boisterously, "if a doctor goes round croaking with a cold. Looks bad for the patients, doesn't it?"

"The devil!" exclaimed Fergusson, with quiet chagrin.

For months, Mabel had been servantless in the big house, keeping the home together in penury for her ineffectual brothers.

When this was done, she took an empty jar from a neighbouring grave, brought water, and carefully, most scrupulously sponged the marble headstone and the coping-stone.

There remained distinct in his consciousness, like a vision, the memory of her face, lifted from the tombstone in the churchyard, and looking at him with slow, large, portentous eyes. It was portentous, her face.

It was grey, deadened, and wintry, with a slow, moist, heavy coldness sinking in and deadening all the faculties. But why should he think or notice?

Nothing but work, drudgery, constant hastening from dwelling to dwelling among the colliers and the iron-workers.

He followed her minutely as she moved, direct and intent, like something transmitted rather than stirring in voluntary activity, straight down the field towards the pond.

He was divesting himself of his coat, intending to find some dry clothing upstairs.

He did not shudder at all, though his clothes were sodden on him.

She looked at him again, with the same supplication of powerful love, and that same transcendent, frightening light of triumph.

Her eyes were wistful and unfathomable.

"Kiss me," she said wistfully.

"No, I want you, I want you," was all he answered blindly, with that terrible intonation which frightened her almost more than her horror lest he should not want her.