Page:Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes - The Lodger.djvu/149



Daisy’s father and stepmother stood side by side at the front door, watching the girl and young Chandler walk off into the darkness.

A yellow pall of fog had suddenly descended on London, and Joe had come a full half-hour before they expected him, explaining, rather lamely, that it was the fog which had brought him so soon.

"If we was to have waited much longer, perhaps, ’twouldn’t have been possible to walk a yard," he explained, and they had accepted, silently, his explanation.

"I hope it’s quite safe sending her off like that?"

Bunting looked deprecatingly at his wife. She had already told him more than once that he was too fussy about Daisy, that about his daughter he was like an old hen with her last chicken.

"She’s safer than she would be with you or me. She couldn’t have a smarter young fellow to look after her."

"It’ll be awful thick at Hyde Park Corner," said Bunting. "It’s always worse there than anywhere else. If I was Joe I’d ’a taken her by the Underground Railway to Victoria—that ’ud been the best way, considering the weather ’tis."

"They don’t think anything of the weather, bless you!" said his wife. "They’ll walk and walk as long as there’s a glimmer left for ’em to steer by. Daisy’s