Page:Delight - de la Roche - 1926.djvu/143

 "I'll pink paper him," groaned Jimmy. "Oh, I like his cheek, I do."

Delight sighed. "He's got a nice shop. He makes clothes for the best people in Brancepeth."

"And his poor crippled wife just dead three months! He ought to be horse-whipped."

"Three months is quite a long time, Jimmy. Then, too, he's bought her a beautiful tall monument. He says so in the letter."

"On pink paper! Talking about a monument on pink paper! Where's this here letter? Give it over to me. I'll answer it, by thunder!"

Instinctively her hand went to her bosom. Her attitude became defensive. She could not hand over the poor little tailor's tender missive to another man.

"No, Jimmy. I can't do that. 'Twouldn't be fair."

"Is it fair to me to go carrying another man's letter next your heart?"

"It isn't doing no one any harm."

"Are you engaged to me or aren't you?" She smiled roguishly at him, and a sudden flash of lightning illuminating her face, twisted her smile into a malicious grin, gave her face a sinister, unknown quality like that of some tormenting stranger. He suddenly felt terrified of her.

The breeze that came in the window was hot and dry with fine dust. The coarse lace window-curtain was whipped up and blown against his face. His nostrils were filled with a musty odour.

"Give me that letter," he snarled, tearing the curtain from his head, "or it'll be the worse for you."

Laughing, Delight put her arm around him and pressed her head against his shoulder, but instead of pacifying him, she only enraged him the more. His arm closed