Page:Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes - The Lodger.djvu/200

Rh bad—not even when they had been half starving, and dreadfully, dreadfully worked.

"Yes," she said briefly, "I’ve a pain in my head, at the back of my neck. It doesn’t often leave me; it gets worse when anything upsets me, like I was upset last night by Joe Chandler."

"He was a silly ass to come and do a thing like that!" said Bunting crossly. "I’d a good mind to tell him so, too. But I must say, Ellen, I wonder he took you in—he didn’t me!"

"Well, you had no chance he should—you knew who it was," she said slowly.

And Bunting remained silent, for Ellen was right. Joe Chandler had already spoken when he, Bunting, came out into the hall, and saw their cleverly disguised visitor.

"Those big black moustaches," he went on complainingly, "and that black wig—why, ’twas too ridic’lous—that’s what I call it!"

"Not to anyone who didn’t know Joe," she said sharply.

"Well, I don’t know. He didn’t look like a real man—nohow. If he’s a wise lad, he won’t let our Daisy ever see him looking like that!" and Bunting laughed, a comfortable laugh.

He had thought a good deal about Daisy and young Chandler the last two days, and, on the whole, he was well pleased. It was a dull, unnatural life the girl was leading with Old Aunt. And Joe was earning good money. They wouldn’t have long to wait, these two young people, as a beau and his girl often have to wait, as he, Bunting, and Daisy’s mother had had to do, for ever so long before they could be married. No, there was no reason why