Page:Gissing - The Nether World, vol. II, 1889.djvu/41

 right to give way to such thoughts. I was going to say I’d come and be with you all Saturday afternoon, but I don’t know whether I shall now. And I’d been thinking you might like to come and see me on Sunday, but I can’t have people that go to the publichouse, so we won’t say anything more about it. I shall have to be off; good-bye!”

She stepped to the door.

“Miss Snowdon!”

Jane turned, and after an instant of mock severity, broke into a laugh which seemed to fill the wretched den with sunlight. Words, too, she found; words of soothing influence such as leap from the heart to the tongue in spite of the heavy thoughts that try to check them. Pennyloaf was learning to depend upon these words for strength in her desolation. They did not excite her to much hopefulness, but there was a sustaining power in their sweet sincerity which made all the difference between despair tending to evil and the sigh of renewed effort. “I don’t care,” Pennyloaf had got into the habit of thinking,