may be. I hope not.”
They hurried along the silent, dark little street, the only people out of doors. Clara quickly entered the house. He hesitated.
He leaped up the step and was in the room. Her mother appeared in the inner doorway, large and hostile.
“Who have you got there?” she asked.
“It's Mr. Morel; he has missed his train. I thought we might put him up for the night, and save him a ten-mile walk.”
“H'm,” exclaimed Mrs. Radford. “That's your lookout! If you've invited him, he's very welcome as far as I'm concerned. YOU keep the house!”
“If you don't like me, I'll go away again,” he said.
“Nay, nay, you needn't! Come along in! I dunno what you'll think of the supper I'd got her.”
It was a little dish of chip potatoes and a piece of bacon. The table was roughly laid for one.
“You can have some more bacon,” continued Mrs. Radford. “More chips you can't have.”
“It's a shame to bother you,” he said.
“Oh, don't you be apologetic! It doesn't DO wi' me! You treated her to the theatre, didn't you?” There was a sarcasm in the last question.
“Well?” laughed Paul uncomfortably.
“Well, and what's an inch of bacon! Take your coat off.”
The big, straight-standing woman was trying to estimate the situation. She moved about the cupboard. Clara took his coat. The room was very warm and cosy in the lamplight.
“My sirs!” exclaimed Mrs. Radford; “but you two's a pair of bright beauties, I must say! What's all that get-up for?”
“I believe we don't know,” he said, feeling a victim.
“There isn't room in THIS house for two such bobby-dazzlers, if you fly your kites THAT high!” she rallied them. It was a nasty thrust.
He in his dinner jacket, and Clara in her green dress and bare arms, were confused. They felt they must shelter each other in that little kitchen.
“And look at THAT blossom!” continued Mrs. Radford, pointing to Clara. “What does she reckon she did it for?”
Paul looked at Clara. She was rosy; her neck was warm with blushes. There was a moment of silence.
“You like to see it, don't you?” he asked.
The mother had them in her power. All the time his heart was beating hard, and he was tight with anxiety. But he would fight her.
“Me like to see it!” exclaimed the old woman. “What should I like to see her make a fool of herself for?”
“I've seen people look bigger fools,” he said. Clara was under his protection now.
“Oh, ay! and when was that?” came the sarcastic rejoinder.
“When they made frights of themselves,” he answered.
Mrs. Radford, large and threatening, stood suspended on the hearthrug, holding her fork.
“They're fools either road,” she answered at length, turning to the Dutch oven.
“No,” he said, fighting stoutly. “Folk ought to look as well as they can.”
“And do you call THAT looking nice!” cried the mother, pointing a scornful fork at Clara. “That—that looks as if it wasn't properly dressed!”
“I believe you're jealous that you can't swank as well,” he said laughing.
“Me! I could have worn evening dress with anybody, if I'd wanted to!” came the scornful answer.
“And why didn't you want to?” he asked pertinently. “Or DID you wear it?”
There was a long pause. Mrs. Radford readjusted the bacon in the Dutch oven. His heart beat fast, for fear he had offended her.
“Me!” she exclaimed at last. “No, I didn't! And when I was in service, I knew as soon as one of the maids came out in bare shoulders what sort SHE was, going to her sixpenny hop!”
“Were you too good to go to a sixpenny hop?” he said.
Clara sat with bowed head. His eyes were dark and glittering. Mrs. Radford took the Dutch oven from the fire, and stood near him, putting bits of bacon on his plate.
“THERE'S a nice crozzly bit!” she said.
“Don't give me the best!” he said.
“SHE'S got what SHE wants,” was the answer.
There was a sort of scornful forbearance in the woman's tone that made Paul know she was mollified.
“But DO have some!” he said to Clara.
She looked up at him with her grey eyes, humiliated and lonely.
“No thanks!” she said.
“Why won't you?” he answered carelessly.
The blood was beating up like fire in his veins. Mrs. Radford sat down again, large and impressive and aloof. He left Clara altogether to attend to the mother.
“They say Sarah Bernhardt's fifty,” he said.
“Fifty! She's turned sixty!” came the scornful answer.
“Well,” he said, “you'd never think it! She made me want to howl even now.”
“I should like to see myself howling at THAT bad old baggage!” said Mrs. Radford. “It's time she began to think herself a grandmother, not a shrieking catamaran—”
He laughed.
“A catamaran is a boat the Malays use,” he said.
“And it's a word as I use,” she retorted.
“My mother does sometimes, and it's no good my telling her,” he said.
“I s'd think she boxes your ears,” said Mrs. Radford, good-humouredly.
“She'd like to, and she says she will, so I give her a little stool to stand on.”
“That's the worst of my mother,” said Clara. “She never wants a stool for anything.”
“But she often can't touch THAT lady with a long prop,” retorted Mrs. Radford to Paul.
“I s'd think she doesn't want touching with a prop,” he laughed. “I shouldn't.”
“It might do the pair of you good to give you a crack on the head with one,” said the mother, laughing suddenly.
