Page:Tales of the Unexpected (1924).djvu/244

 fancied the thing was but the matter of a night until he returned to the shop at Aldington Corner and discovered amidst their astonishment that he had been away three weeks.

'Lor! the trouble I 'ad!' said Mr Skelmersdale.

'How?'

'Explaining. I suppose you've never had anything like that to explain.'

'Never,' I said, and he expatiated for a time on the behaviour of this person and that. One name he avoided for a space.

'And Millie?' said I at last.

'I didn't seem to care a bit for seeing Millie,' he said.

'I expect she seemed changed? '

'Every one was changed. Changed for good. Every one seemed big, you know, and coarse. And their voices seemed loud. Why, the sun, when it rose in the morning, fair hit me in the eye! '

'And Millie?'

'I didn't want to see Millie.'

'And when you did?'

'I came up against her Sunday, coming out of church.

"Where you been?" she said, and I saw there was a row. I didn't care if there was. I seemed to forget about her even while she was there a-talking to me. She was just nothing. I couldn't make out whatever I 'ad seen in 'er ever, or what there could 'ave been. Sometimes when she wasn't about. I did get back a little, but never when she was there. Then it was always the other came up and blotted her out. . . . Any'ow, it didn't break her heart.'

'Married?' I asked.

'Married 'er cousin,' said Mr Skelmersdale, and reflected on the pattern of the tablecloth for a space.

When he spoke again it was clear that his former sweetheart had clean vanished from his mind, and that