"They" - A drive along lonely English country roads leads to a beautiful and secluded house where children can be glimpsed playing in the gardens and watching shyly from the windows. But they are not visible to everyone ... "Mary Postgate" - Her employer's nephew provides dull, methodical Mary Postgate with the only focus for her frustrated motherly affection. When he is killed in the Great War her reaction is matter of fact and without tears, but even inertia can be turned into a means of retribution.