Page:Triangles of life, and other stories.djvu/94

 exasperating, maddening and sickening and ruining unending of it all.

Billy was a little man who used to run out of the house, and through a gap in the back hedge, and round through brooks, over stiles and gates, across lanes, and so in a circle home, when very much upset. Lizzie's persistent silence used to make him do this. Some men have wives who nag eternally; others will wait on them for days in obstinate, idiotic silence.

Lizzie considered in a practical, nothing-in-particular way that she might have to see a doctor about Billy's head if he went on like that, and that the doctor might have to put him in the mad-house if he got too bad. They call a spade a spade amongst Lizzie's class in England.

Some wives "never quarrel," but can drive any husband mad, all the same; so one day Billy suddenly felt his arm stiffen and hand clench! . . . . He wrenched himself out of the kitchen in time, and from the verge of "It," and half ran all the way to Shepperton, having stumbled into the Farmers' Arms to borrow a cap, which the Farmers' Arms hastened to lend him without question, and with a rough show of understanding. But neither the Farmers' Arms nor Billy understood yet, though the Arms thought it did. Billy was soon to understand. He caught the train for London with a wild idea of going to some people he'd been "warm" with—but never so warm as he'd been with Bob.

Then the reaction came, and Billy began to think, wildly at first, but he began to think, and the elastic