Page:Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes - The Lodger.djvu/201

Rh they shouldn’t be spliced quite soon—if so the fancy took them. And Bunting had very little doubt that so the fancy would take Joe, at any rate.

But there was plenty of time. Daisy wouldn’t be eighteen till the week after next. They might wait till she was twenty. By that time Old Aunt might be dead, and Daisy might have come into quite a tidy little bit of money.

"What are you smiling at?" said his wife sharply.

And he shook himself. "I—smiling? At nothing that I knows of." Then he waited a moment. "Well, if you will know, Ellen, I was just thinking of Daisy and that young chap Joe Chandler. He is gone on her, ain’t he?"

"Gone?" And then Mrs. Bunting laughed, a queer, odd, not unkindly laugh. "Gone, Bunting?" she repeated. "Why, he’s out o’ sight—right, out of sight!"

Then hesitatingly, and looking narrowly at her husband, she went on, twisting a bit of her black apron with her fingers as she spoke:—"I suppose he’ll be going over this afternoon to fetch her? Or—or d’you think he’ll have to be at that inquest, Bunting?"

"Inquest? What inquest?" He looked at her puzzled.

"Why, the inquest on them bodies found in the passage near by King’s Cross."

"Oh, no; he’d have no call to be at the inquest. For the matter o’ that, I know he’s going over to fetch Daisy. He said so last night—just when you went up to the lodger."

"That’s just as well." Mrs. Bunting spoke with considerable satisfaction. "Otherwise I suppose you’d ha’