Page:Adams - A Child of the Age.djvu/90

78 out of hours, a week ago; but she won't pay for it till the end of the month, she says.'

'O my eye, that's likely, ain't it now? It's all fudge—that's what it is! Now look here. You pay me to-night or you go! So there, plain and straight! I've got to live like the rest of you, I suppose? Will you give it me now } What 's more, let me tell you, I'm reg'lar hard up, meeself.… You've given me a shilling already. Now come! give us the rest, and I'll let you go tick for the other week till Saturday.'

Another pause.

'—You know you can get it, if you like, you know you can.' Mrs. Smith's voice too was soft now, but hoarsely.

'I can't! How can I? Or else I would give it you.'

'O you can—if you like.'

'How can I?'

'Oh, come! You know well enough!… You ain't so bad looking as all that.'

I put my hands behind me; my breath went from me. My fingers scraped lightly on the wood and paper. I was trembling all over. I did not know whether to cry out, or, keeping silence, to see what would be the end.

I waited, the blood pulsing through my head, and whirring in my ears, till I was nigh blinded and deafened.

It seemed to me that it was half an hour before either of them spoke again.

Then:

'O do wait, do wait, Mrs. Smith,' pleaded the other, 'I really will pay you on Saturday night. I will really. I've been ill. I will'

Her voice maddened me. I pulled-to my door somehow and threw myself on to the bed, shivering and clutching myself, muttering into the pillow: 'O, there cannot be a God in heaven, who is just and good and will let such things be!' At last I stopped.—What would she do? The thought stayed me all into listening for a moment. Then I began to struggle again, and again stopped and listened. It seemed I was so for hours. As I listened the fourth or fifth time, I heard Mrs. Smith's voice almost at the door: then there came