Page:Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes - The Lodger.djvu/296

Rh He waited a moment, leaning against the wall of the passage. "It did give me a turn," he said, and then, warningly, "Don’t frighten the girl, Ellen."

Daisy was standing before the fire in their sitting room, admiring herself in the glass.

"Oh, father," she exclaimed, without turning round, "I’ve seen the lodger! He’s quite a nice gentleman, though, to be sure, he does look a cure. He rang his bell, but I didn’t like to go up; and so he came down to ask Ellen for something. We had quite a nice little chat—that we had. I told him it was my birthday, and he asked me and Ellen to go to Madame Tussaud’s with him this afternoon." She laughed, a little self-consciously. "Of course, I could see he was ‘centric, and then at first he spoke so funnily. ‘And who be you?’ he says, threatening-like. And I says to him, ‘I’m Mr. Bunting’s daughter, sir.’ ‘Then you’re a very fortunate girl’—that’s what he says, Ellen—‘to ’ave such a nice stepmother as you’ve got. That’s why,’ he says, ‘you look such a good, innocent girl.’ And then he quoted a bit of the Prayer Book. ‘Keep innocency,’ he says, wagging his head at me. Lor’! It made me feel as if I was with Old Aunt again."

"I won’t have you going out with the lodger—that’s flat."

Bunting spoke in a muffled, angry tone. He was wiping his forehead with one hand, while with the other he mechanically squeezed the little packet of tobacco, for which, as he now remembered, he had forgotten to pay.

Daisy pouted. "Oh, father, I think you might let me have a treat on my birthday! I told him that