Page:Gissing - The Nether World, vol. III, 1889.djvu/175

Rh the sum of threepence-farthing, alleged by the landlady to be owing on some account or other. The two women had already reached the point of calling each other liar and thief. Clem, having no acquaintance with the lodger, walked into the kitchen with an air of contemptuous indifference. The quarrel continued for another ten minutes,—if the head of either had been suddenly cut off it would assuredly have gone on railing for an appreciable time,—and Clem waited, sitting before the fire. At last the lodger had departed, and the last note of her virulence died away.

“And what do you want?” asked Mrs. Peckover, turning sharply upon her daughter.

“I suppose I can come to see you, can’t I?”

“Come to see me! Likely! When did you come last? You’re a ungrateful beast, that’s what you are!”

“All right. Go a’ead! Anything else you’d like to call me?”

Mrs. Peckover was hurt by the completeness with which Clem had established her independence. To do the woman justice, she had been actuated, in her design of capturing Joseph Snowdon, at least as much by a wish