Page:Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes - The Lodger.djvu/144

Rh put about at the idea of the girl coming again. But now? Well, now she had become quite tolerant, quite kindly—at any rate as far as Joe Chandler was concerned.

She wondered why.

Still, ’twouldn’t do Joe a bit of harm not to see the girl for a couple of days. In fact, ’twould be a very good thing, for then he’d think of Daisy—think of her to the exclusion of all else. Absence does make the heart grow fonder—at first, at any rate. Mrs. Bunting was well aware of that. During the long course of hers and Bunting’s mild courting, they’d been separated for about three months, and it was that three months which had made up her mind for her. She had got so used to Bunting that she couldn’t do without him, and she had felt—oddest fact of all—acutely, miserably jealous. But she hadn’t let him know that—no fear!

Of course, Joe mustn’t neglect his job—that would never do. But what a good thing it was, after all, that he wasn’t like some of those detective chaps that are written about in stories—the sort of chaps that know everything, see everything, guess everything—even where there isn’t anything to see, or know, or guess!

Why, to take only one little fact—Joe Chandler had never shown the slightest curiosity about their lodger…

Mrs. Bunting pulled herself together with a start, and hurried quickly on. Bunting would begin to wonder what had happened to her.

She went into the Post Office and handed the form to the young woman without a word. Margaret, a sensible woman, who was accustomed to manage other