In another part of the town, near Sneinton Church, another girl came to the
door to look at the night. She was tall and slender, dressed with the severe
accuracy which marks the girl of superior culture. Her hair was arranged with
simplicity about the long, pale, cleanly cut face. She leaned forward very
slightly to glance down the street, listening. She very carefully preserved the
appearance of having come quite casually to the door, yet she lingered and
lingered and stood very still to listen when she heard a footstep, but when it
proved to be only a common man, she drew herself up proudly and looked with a
small smile over his head. He hesitated to glance into the open hall, lighted
so spaciously with a scarlet-shaded lamp, and at the slim girl in brown silk
lifted up before the light. But she, she looked over his head. He passed on.
Presently she started and hung in suspense. Somebody was crossing the road. She
ran down the steps in a pretty welcome, not effuse, saying in quick, but
accurately articulated words: “Will! I began to think you’d gone to
the fair. I came out to listen to it. I felt almost sure you’d gone.
You’re coming in, aren’t you?” She waited a moment anxiously.
“We expect you to dinner, you know,” she added wistfully.
The man, who had a short face and spoke with his lip curling up on one side, in
a drawling speech with ironically exaggerated intonation, replied after a short
hesitation:
“I’m awfully sorry, I am, straight, Lois. It’s a shame.
I’ve got to go round to the biz. Man proposes—the devil
disposes.” He turned aside with irony in the darkness.
“But surely, Will!” remonstrated the girl, keenly disappointed.
“Fact, Lois!—I feel wild about it myself. But I’ve got to go
down to the works. They may be getting a bit warm down there, you
know”—he jerked his head in the direction of the fair. “If
the Lambs get frisky!—they’re a bit off about the work, and
they’d just be in their element if they could set a lighted match to
something——”
“Will, you don’t think——!” exclaimed the girl,
laying her hand on his arm in the true fashion of romance, and looking up at
him earnestly.
“Dad’s not sure,” he replied, looking down at her with
gravity. They remained in this attitude for a moment, then he said:
“I might stop a bit. It’s all right for an hour, I should
think.”
She looked at him earnestly, then said in tones of deep disappointment and of
fortitude: “No, Will, you must go. You’d better
go——”
“It’s a shame!” he murmured, standing a moment at a loose
end. Then, glancing down the street to see he was alone, he put his arm round
her waist and said in a difficult voice: “How goes it?”
She let him keep her for a moment, then he kissed her as if afraid of what he
was doing. They were both uncomfortable.
“Well——!” he said at length.
“Good night!” she said, setting him free to go.
He hung a moment near her, as if ashamed. Then “Good night,” he
answered, and he broke away. She listened to his footsteps in the night, before
composing herself to turn indoors.
“Helloa!” said her father, glancing over his paper as she entered
the dining-room. “What’s up, then?”
“Oh, nothing,” she replied, in her calm tones. “Will
won’t be here to dinner tonight.”
“What, gone to the fair?”
“No.”
“Oh! What’s got him then?”
Lois looked at her father, and answered:
“He’s gone down to the factory. They are afraid of the
hands.”
Her father looked at her closely.
“Oh, aye!” he answered, undecided, and they sat down to dinner.
