Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/46

 "She—sacked her."

"What for?"

"Romping."

Not much was said, though it was obvious that the other girls felt themselves injured by the peremptory ejection of a comrade, but they were afraid of the Lioness, and they mistrusted Sorrell—the man. He became aware of the mistrust; it made him uncomfortable; moreover he had felt a sudden, sordid tremor of fear.

That which had happened to Millie might happen to him, and he knew that for the boy's sake such a thing must not happen.

The keenness of his own anxiety was a humiliation, and he accepted the humiliation, explaining it to himself quite frankly as though he were explaining the wearing of a shabby suit of clothes. He was alarmed at the possibility of his being pushed out into the street, of losing his thirty shillings, his keep, and his tips. Yet this fear shocked him. That a man should be afraid of being evicted from such a caravanserie! He had not realized how much the Angel Inn had become his "straw," and that he was ready to cling to it with the instinctive terror of a man who feared the unknown.

That afternoon he spent himself in a passion of activity. He went about eagerly looking for work. He made work. He attacked the various slovenliness of the place.

He was aware of the constant nearness of the woman. She—too—appeared to be in a restless and active mood. She kept coming out of the office of the "Cubby Hole," going out or up the stairs and returning. She saw Sorrell in all sorts of postures and places, on his knees polishing the "surround" of the lounge, cleaning the glass panels of the doors, carrying out the aspidistras and washing them in the yard. She had one particular glimpse of him doubled up under the big walnut table in the passage, but what he was doing there she did not pretend to know.

Though she passed him a dozen times that afternoon she neither spoke to him nor appeared to look in his direction, but each of them was conscious of the other. The feline intuition of the woman divined Sorrell's fear. He was like some busy thing in a cage; propitiatory, eagerly turning a