Page:Adams - A Child of the Age.djvu/233

221 needn't have kept her up all this time, and then come and told her that!

How did she mean that I had kept her up? Since when had she taken to sitting up for me when I went out at night?

She believed that I had been talking with a lot of those women! And why hadn't I gone home with one and never come back here again? She (Rosy) had always thought it would be like this! she knew quite well when I went away this evening that I was going after some … some one else (Tears): I was a horrid …

I thought the child was ill, and tried to comfort her. She would take no comfort. I came to her, intending to try more personal comfort. She was up and, with an intense: 'I hate you!… Go away!' herself went away.

After a little pondering, I decided that it would be best to let her alone, and composed myself to sleep in the arm-chair and another chair for my feet. Next morning, Marie, entering to dust the room, was apparently the instrument of wakening me from bad dreams. For a little I did not know whether to grin, or pull a face at myself, or take Rosy's quarrel with me seriously: then, observing the sunshine in the room, determined to go out and get rid of all these spiritual cobwebs. Dried and somewhat dirty as I felt, I would not go into the bedroom and wash myself, with the chance of awakening her. I passed into the hall and, taking up my sticky out on to the the landing. I was going down the first flight of steps, with my mind full of thought, when, all at once, there was a stumble; a fall; a clutching at and a missing of the bannister, and I was lying, half-stunned and dazed, on the broad step at the foot of the flight.

Then wrath rose in and burst forth as I got up in a keen:

'Blast!'

This foolery was past all endurance!—I suddenly dropped down again. My foot had failed me. The anguish in it, in my ankle particularly, was almost intolerable. It turned me sick. I rolled on to my