And now that little devil must keep it, for if she went back on her word it would put William on the track of other little luxuries that she squeezed out of his wages unknown to him--luxuries whose chief charm lay in their secrecy. She felt ready to weep with vexation.

Instead she cried gaily:

"I've been tellin' them what a nice little 'ome they've got together.

I've seen plenty would be glad to start on less."

Partridge seemed not to hear his wife's remark. His mind dulled by shock and misfortune, was slowly revolving forgotten scenes. He saw with incredible sharpness of view his first home, with its few sticks of second-hand furniture like Pinkey's, and Pinkey's mother, the dead image of her daughter. That was where he belonged--to the old time, when he was young and proud of himself, able to drink his glass and sing a song with the best of them. Someone pulled him gently. He looked round, wondering what he was doing there. But Pinkey pulled him across the room to Chook, who was standing like a fool. He looked Chook up and down as if he were a piece of furniture, and then, without a word, held out his hand. The reconciliation was complete.

"Well, we must be goin', William," said Mrs Partridge, wondering how she was to get home without a hat; but Partridge followed Chook into the kitchen, where a candle was burning. Chook held the candle in his hand to show the little dresser with the cups and saucers and plates arranged in mathematical precision. The pots and pans were already hung on hooks. They had all seen service, and in Chook's eyes seemed more at home than the brand-new things that hung in the shops. As Chook looked round with pride, he became aware that Partridge was pushing something into his hand. It seemed like a wad of dirty paper, and Chook held it to the candle in surprise. He unrolled it with his fingers, and recognized banknotes.

"'Ere, I don't want yer money," cried Chook, offering the wad of paper to the old man; but he pushed it back into Chook's hand with an imploring look.

"D'ye mean it fer Liz?" asked Chook.

Partridge nodded; his eyes were full of tears.

"Yous are a white man, an' I always knew it. Yer niver 'ad no cause ter go crook on me, but I ain't complainin'," cried Chook hoarsely.

The tears were running a zigzag course over the grey stubble of Partridge's cheeks.

"Yer'll be satisfied if I think as much of 'er as yous did of her mother?" asked Chook, feeling a lump in his throat.

Partridge nodded, swallowing as if he were choking.

"She's my wife, an' the best pal I ever 'ad, an' a man can't say more than that," cried Chook proudly, but his eyes were full of tears.

Without a word the grey-haired old man shook his head and hurried to the front door, where Mrs Partridge was waiting impatiently. She had forced the hat on Pinkey in a speech full of bitterness, and had refused the loan of a hat to see her home. To explain her bare head, she had prepared a little speech about running down without a hat because of the fine night, but Partridge was too agitated to notice what she wore.

When they stepped inside, the first thing that met Chook's eyes was the hat with the wonderful feathers lying on a chair where Pinkey had disdainfully thrown it. He stood and laughed till his ribs ached as he thought of the figure cut by Mrs Partridge. He looked round for Pinkey to join in, and was amazed to find her in tears.

"W'y, wot's the matter, Liz?" he cried, serious in a moment.

"Nuthin'," said Pinkey, drying her eyes "I was cryin' because I'm glad father made it up with you. 'E's bin a good father to me. W'en Lil an' me was kids, 'e used ter take us out every Saturday afternoon, and buy us lollies," and the tears flowed again.

Chook wisely decided to say nothing about the banknotes till her nerves were steadier.

"'Ere, cum an' try on yer new 'at," he cried, to divert her thoughts.

"Me?" cried Pinkey, blazing. "Do yer think I'd put anythin' on my 'ead belongin' to 'er?"

"All right," said Chook, with regret, "I'll give it to mother fer one of the kids."

"Yer can burn it, if yer like," cried Pinkey.

Chook held up the hat, and examined it with interest. It was quite unlike any he had seen before.

"See 'ow it look on yer," he coaxed.

"Not me," said Pinkey, glaring at the hat as if it were Mrs Partridge.

But Chook had made up his mind, and after a short scuffle, he dragged Pinkey before the glass with the hat on her head.

"That's back ter front, yer silly," she said, suddenly quiet.

A minute later she was staring into the glass, silent and absorbed, forgetful of Mrs Partridge, Chook, and her father. The hat was a dream. The black trimmings and drooping feathers set off the ivory pallor of her face and made the wonderful hair gleam like threads of precious metal. She turned her head to judge it at very angle, surprised at her own beauty. Presently she lifted it off her head as tenderly as if it were a crown, with the reverence of women for the things that increase their beauty. She put it down as if it were made of glass.

"I'll git Miss Jones to alter the bow, an' put the feathers farther back," she said, like one in a dream.

"I thought yer wouldn't wear it at any price," said Chook, delighted, but puzzled.

"Sometimes you talk like a man that's bin drinkin'," said Pinkey, with the faintest possible smile.

CHAPTER 16

A DEATH IN THE FAMILY

It was past ten o'clock, and one by one, with a sudden, swift collapse, each shop in Botany Road extinguished its lights, leaving a blank gap in the shining row of glass windows. Mrs Yabsley turned into Cardigan Street and, taking a firmer grip of her parcels, mounted the hill slowly on account of her breath. She still continued to shop at the last minute, in a panic, as her mother had done before her, proud of her habit of being the last customer at the butcher's and the grocer's.

She looked up at the sky and, being anxious for the morrow, tried to forecast the weather. A sharp wind was blowing, and the stars winked cheerfully in a windswept sky. There was every promise of a fine day, but to make sure, she tried the corn on her left foot. The corn gave no sign, and she thought with satisfaction of her new companion, Miss Perkins.

For years she had searched high and low for some penniless woman to share her cottage and Jonah's allowance, and her pensioners had gone out of their way to invent new methods of robbing her. But Miss Perkins (whom she had found shivering and hungry on the doorstep as she was going to bed one night and had taken in without asking questions, as was her habit) guarded Mrs Yabsley's property like a watchdog. For Cardigan Street, when it learned that Mrs Yabsley only worked for the fun of the thing, had leaped to the conclusion that she was rolling in money. They knew that she had given Jonah his start in life, and felt certain that she owned half of the Silver Shoe.

So the older residents had come to look on Mrs Yabsley as their property, and they formed a sort of club to sponge on her methodically.

They ran out of tea, sugar and flour, and kept the landlord waiting while they ran up to borrow a shilling. They each had their own day, and kept to it, respecting the rights of their friends to a share of the plunder. None went away empty-handed, and they looked with unfriendly eyes on any new arrivals who might interfere with their rights. They thought they deceived the old woman, and the tea and groceries had a finer flavour in consequence; but they would have been surprised to know that Mrs Yabsley had herself fixed her allowance from Jonah at two pounds a week and her rent.

"That's enough money fer me to play the fool with, an' if it don't do much good, it can't do much 'arm," she had remarked, with a mysterious smile, when he had offered her anything she needed to live in comfort.

The terrible Miss Perkins had altered all that. She had discovered that Mrs Harris was paying for a new hat with the shilling a week she got for Johnny's medicine; that Mrs Thorpe smelt of drink half an hour after she had got two shillings towards the rent; that Mr Hawkins had given his wife a black eye for saying that he was strong enough to go to work again. Mrs Yabsley had listened with a perplexing smile to her companion's cries of indignation.

"I could 'ave told yer all that meself," she said, "but wot's it matter? Who am I to sit in judgment on 'em? They know I've got more money than I want, but they're too proud to ask fer it openly. People with better shirts on their backs are built the same way, if all I 'ear is true. I've bin poor meself an' yer may think there's somethin'

wrong in me 'ead, but if I've got a shillin', an' some poor devil's got nuthin', I reckon I owe 'im sixpence. It isn't likely fer you to understand such things, bein' brought up in the lap of luxury, but don't yer run away with the idea that poor people are the only ones who are ashamed to beg an' willin' to steal."

Mrs Yabsley had asked no questions when she had found Miss Perkins on the step, but little by little her companion had dropped hints of former glory, and then launched into a surprising tale. She was the daughter of a rich man, who had died suddenly, and left her at the mercy of a stepmother and she had grown desperate and fled, choosing to earn her own bread till her cousin arrived, who was on his way from England to marry her. On several occasions she had forgotten that her name was Perkins, and when Mrs Yabsley dryly commented on this, she confessed that she had borrowed the name from her maid when she fled.

And she whispered her real name in the ear of Mrs Yabsley, who marvelled, and promised to keep the secret.

Mrs Yabsley, who was no fool, looked for some proof of the story, and was satisfied. The girl was young and pretty, and gave herself the airs of a duchess. Mrs Swadling, indeed, had spent so much of her time at the cottage trying to worm her secret from the genteel stranger that she unconsciously imitated her aristocratic manner and way of talking, until Mr Swadling had brought her to her senses by getting drunk and giving her a pair of black eyes, which destroyed all resemblance to the fascinating stranger. Mrs Swadling had learned nothing, but she assured half the street that Miss Perkins's father had turned her out of doors for refusing to marry a man old enough to be her father, and the other half that a forged will had robbed her of thousands and a carriage and pair.

Cardigan Street had watched the aristocracy from the gallery of the theatre with sharp, envious eyes, and reported their doings to Mrs Yabsley, but Miss Perkins was the first specimen she had ever seen in the flesh. In a week she learned more about the habits of the idle rich than she had ever imagined in a lifetime. Her lodger lay in bed till ten in the morning, and expected to be waited on hand and foot. And when Mrs Yabsley could spare a minute, she described in detail the splendours of her father's home. She talked incessantly of helping Mrs Yabsley with the washing, but she seemed as helpless as a child, and Mrs Yabsley, noticing the softness and whiteness of her hands, knew that she had never done a stroke of work in her life. Then, with the curious reverence of the worker for the idler, she explained to her lodger that she only worked for exercise.

When Miss Perkins came, she had nothing but what she stood up in; but one night she slipped out under cover of darkness, and returned with a dress-basket full of finery, with which she dazzled Mrs Yabsley's eyes in the seclusion of the cottage. The basket also contained a number of pots and bottles with which she spent hours before the mirror, touching up her eyebrows and cheeks and lips. When Mrs Yabsley remarked bluntly that she was young and pretty enough without these aids, she learned with amazement that all ladies in society used them. Mrs Yabsley never tired of hearing Miss Perkins describe the splendours of her lost home.

She recognized that she had lived in another world, where you lounged gracefully on velvet couches and life was one long holiday.

"It's funny," she remarked, "'ow yer run up agin things in this world.

I never 'ad no partic'lar fancy fer dirty clothes an' soapsuds, but in my time, which ever way I went, I never ran agin the drorin'-room carpet an' the easy-chairs. It was the boilin' copper, the scrubbin'

brush, an' the kitchen floor every time."

She was intensely interested in Miss Perkins's cousin, who was on his way from England to marry her. She described him so minutely that Mrs Yabsley would have recognized him if she had met him in the street.