Page:Quiller-Couch--Old fires and profitable ghosts.djvu/346

338 carry it off lightly … After all, it's the shop it would call attention to … not the house. And one must advertise in these days."

She was looking at him steadily now. "Yes," she assented, "people would talk."

"And they pity me. I do hate to be pitied, in that way. Even the people up here, at the old lodgings … I won't come to them again. If I thought the children … One never can tell how much children know" "Don't, Willy!"

He plunged a hand into his pocket. "I daresay, now, you're starving?"

Her arms began to sway again, and she laughed quietly, hideously. "Don't—don't—don't! I make money. That's the worst. I make money. Oh, why don't you hit me? Why was you always a soft man?"

For a moment he stood horribly revolted. But his weakness had a better side, and he showed it now.

"I say, Annie … is it so bad?"

"It is hell."

"'Soft'?" he harked back again. "It might take some courage to be soft."

She peered at him eagerly; then sighed. "But you haven't that sort of courage, Willy."

"They would say …" he went on musing, "I wonder what they would say?… Come back to the lamp," he cried with sudden peevishness.