Page:Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes - The Lodger.djvu/312

Rh "Well, he never seemed so to me," said Bunting stoutly. "He simply seemed to me ’centric—that’s all he did. Not a bit madder than many I could tell you of." He was walking round the room restlessly, but he stopped short at last. "And what d’you think we ought to do now?"

Mrs. Bunting shook her head impatiently. "I don’t think we ought to do nothing," she said. "Why should we?"

And then again he began walking round the room in an aimless fashion that irritated her.

"If only I could put out a bit of supper for him somewhere where he would get it! And his money, too? I hate to feel it’s in there."

"Don’t you make any mistake—he’ll come back for that," said Bunting, with decision.

But Mrs. Bunting shook her head. She knew better.

"Now," she said, "you go off up to bed. It’s no use us sitting up any longer."

And Bunting acquiesced.

She ran down and got him a bedroom candle—there was no gas in the little back bedroom upstairs. And then she watched him go slowly up.

Suddenly he turned and came down again. "Ellen," he said, in an urgent whisper, "if I was you I’d take the chain off the door, and I’d lock myself in—that’s what I’m going to do. Then he can sneak in and take his dirty money away."

Mrs. Bunting neither nodded nor shook her head. Slowly she went downstairs, and there she carried out half of Bunting’s advice. She took, that is, the chain