Page:Triangles of life, and other stories.djvu/82

 stand him, in fact. But she didn't mind him now. When Billy, puzzled, asked why, she said, "Oh, nothing in particular." Bob had done nothing to her. Billy confided to Bob, seizing a favourable moment, "It's alright, Bob, she's beginning t' like yer now."

The talk went on amongst the women, lowering and resentful, also impatient, because "nothing seemed to come of it."

There was a woman, in as near the centre of the row of brick dog kennels as possible, who had a hunchbacked daughter, which daughter seemed physically and mentally more a birth of her mother's warped, twisted and evil mind than of her body, which was straight and healthy enough. But she had given her her face. These two were the guardians of the village morality, or immorality, when there was a sign of it, and they kept watch and ward by turns day and night. It was seldom, after dark, but one or the other evil neck was craned over the front hedge, with the pinched and twisted face turning this way and that, to the discomfiture of chance passers-by strolling along pipe in mouth in the dusk, and unaware of the existence of such sinister creatures hereabouts.

A newly-made widow in the other half of their hutch, whose sweet went out of her life with her husband, started a lolly and tobacco shop in the front parlour. And the evil ones never rested nor let their man rest until they started their evil window in opposition. But they couldn't get a boarder like