"This house has been waiting for eight years," said Hannah. "Not badly, and not neglectfully—I have looked at your books, and I have not found one thing wrong with them. Waiting. Nothing in this building has been begun in eight years that would not be finished inside a twelve-month, and I do not think one person here has ever said that out loud, including you."
Mrs. Trant stood in that passage and went a slow, deep red.
"That is not the sash cord," said Hannah Sedge.
Mrs. Trant stopped.
"I have asked you twice. You are the most competent woman I have ever met, and you have had a broken sash cord in a room I sit in every day for six weeks. And I do not believe for one instant that you forgot it. So I sat down last night, and I worked at it. And the answer I came to is that a sash cord in the small drawing room is a thing you would mend for a house that was going on. And that nobody in this building has thought of this house as going on since before you and I ever met."
The housekeeper of Corvedale stood in that passage for a long moment. "He gave the orders about the orchard," she said. "In the second year. He said there was no sense in it, and that it should be left. And I did not argue with him, because you cannot argue with a man about what he will be alive for."
"No."
"And after that..." Mrs. Trant's hands moved. "It got easier, Your Grace. That is the whole of it, and I have not once looked at it until this minute. It got easier to not do things, because every single one of them wanted a decision about how long, and nobody in this house has been able to ask him that since about the third year. So nobody asked anybody anything."
"Nobody asked anybody anything for eight years," said Mrs. Trant. "And it has been perfectly comfortable. And I have just this minute understood what I have been doing. And I am fifty years old, and I find I should like to sit down."