Page:The Small House at Allington Vol 1.djvu/325

Rh fellows that make me hate them the first time I look at them. I've a sort of a feeling that I shall live to kick him some day."

"That's the time, is it? Then I suppose Amelia will have it all her own way now."

"I'll tell you what, Caudle. I'd sooner get up through the trapdoor, and throw myself off the roof into the area, than marry Amelia Roper."

"Have you and she had any conversation since you came back?"

"Not a word."

"Then I tell you fairly you've got trouble before you. Amelia and Maria—Mrs. Lupex, I mean—are as thick as thieves just at present, and they have been talking you over. Maria—that is, Mrs. Lupex—lets it all out to me. You'll have to mind where you are, old fellow."

Eames was not inclined to discuss the matter any further, so he finished his toddy in silence. Cradell, however, who felt that there was something in his affairs of which he had reason to be proud, soon returned to the story of his own very extraordinary position. "By Jove, I don't know that a man was ever so circumstanced," he said. "She looks to me to protect her, and yet what can I do?"

At last Cradell got up, and declared that he must go to the ladies. "She's so nervous, that unless she has some one to countenance her she becomes unwell."

Eames declared his purpose of going to the divan, or to the theatre, or to take a walk in the streets. The smiles of beauty had no longer charms for him in Burton Crescent.

"They'll expect you to take a cup of tea the first night," said Cradell; but Eames declared that they might expect it.

"I'm in no humour for it," said he. "I'll tell you what, Cradell, I shall leave this place, and take rooms for myself somewhere. I'll never go into a lodging-house again."

As he so spoke, he was standing at the dining-room door; but he was not allowed to escape in this easy way. Jemima, as he went out into the passage, was there with a three-cornered note in her hand. "From Miss Mealyer," she said. "Miss Mealyer is in the back parlour all by herself."

Poor Johnny took the note, and read it by the lamp over the front door.