Page:Richard Marsh--The joss, a reversion.djvu/88

76 “You can go back if you like, but I must and will see Tom.”

Nine o’clock came and still no Mr. Cooper. I was in such a state I was ready to drop. It was nearly a quarter-past before he turned up. Then they both began talking together at such a rate that it was impossible to get a word in edgeways. When I did succeed in bringing Pollie to some consciousness of the position we were in, and she asked Mr. Cooper to start back with us at once, he would not go. He said that he had had such a narrow escape the night before, and had had such difficulty in getting in—so far as I could make out he had had to climb up a pipe, or something, and had scraped a hole in both knees of his trousers against the wall—that he had determined that it should be some time before he ran such a risk again, and had therefore made up his mind that he would be in extra early as a sort of set-off. It was no good Pollie talking. For some cause or other he did not seem to be in the best of tempers. And then, when she found that, after all our waiting, he would not see us home, she got excited. They began saying things to each other which they never meant. So they quarrelled.

Finally Mr. Cooper marched off in a rage, declaring that now she had come into a fortune she looked upon him as a servant, and that though she had inherited £488 9s. 6d. a year, and a house, he would not be treated like a lackey. She was in such a fury that she was almost crying. She assured me that she would never speak to him again until she was compelled, and that they would both be grey before that time came. All I wanted to do was to keep outside the quarrel, because they had behaved like a couple of stupids, and to find myself in safe quarters for the night.

“I don’t know, my dear Pollie, if you’re aware that it’s past half-past ten. Do you propose to return to Camford Street?”