Page:Gissing - The Nether World, vol. II, 1889.djvu/77

 “What is it?” asked Joseph James mildly. “Go ahead, Clem.”

“You ain’t bad-tempered, are you? You said you wasn’t.”

“Not I! Best-tempered feller you could have come across. Look at me smiling.”

His grin was in a measure reassuring, but he had caught sight of the piece of paper in her hand, and eyed it steadily.

“You know you played mother a trick a long time ago,” Clem pursued, “when you went off an’ left that child on her ’ands.”

“Hollo! What about that?”

“Well, it wouldn’t be nothing but fair if some one was to go an play tricks with you—just to pay you off in a friendly sort o’ way,—see?”

Mr. Snowdon still smiled, but dubiously.

“Out with it!” he muttered. “I’d have bet a trifle there was some game on. You’re welcome, old girl. Out with it!”

“Did you know as I’d got a brother in ‘Stralia,—him as you used to know when you lived here before?”