Nellie, with lowered head, was seated at a table, mending, the image of tranquillity and soft resignation.  A pile of children’s garments lay by her side, but the article in her busy hands appeared to be an under-shirt of his own.  None but she ever reinforced the buttons on his linen.  Such was her wifely rule, and he considered that there was no sense in it.  She was working by the light of a single lamp on the table, the splendid chandelier being out of action.  Her economy in the use of electricity was incurable, and he considered that there was no sense in that either.

She glanced up, with a guarded expression that might have meant anything.

He said: 

“Aren’t you trying your eyes?”

And she replied: 

“Oh, no!”

Then, plunging, he came to the point: 

“Well, doctor been?”

She nodded.

“What does he say?”

“It’s quite all right.  He did nothing but cover up the place with a bit of cyanide gauze.”

Instantly, in his own esteem, he regained perfection as a father.  Of course the bite was nothing!  Had he not said so from the first?  Had he not been quite sure throughout that the bite was nothing?

“Then why did you sit up?” he asked, and there was a faint righteous challenge in his tone.

“I was anxious about you.  I was afraid—­”

“Didn’t Stirling tell you I had some business?”

“I forget—­”

“I told him to, anyhow....  Important business.”

“It must have been,” said Nellie, in an inscrutable voice.

She rose and gathered together her paraphernalia, and he saw that she was wearing the damnable white apron.  The close atmosphere of the home enveloped and stifled him once more.  How different was this exasperating interior from the large jolly freedom of the Empire Music Hall, and from the whisky, cigarettes and masculinity of that private room at the Turk’s Head!

“It was!” he repeated grimly and resentfully.  “Very important!  And I’ll tell you another thing.  I shall probably have to go to London.”

He said this just to startle her.

“It will do you all the good in the world,” she replied angelically, but unstartled.  “It’s just what you need!” And she gazed at him as though his welfare and felicity were her sole preoccupation.

“I meant I might have to stop there quite a while,” he insisted.

“If you ask me,” she said, “I think it would do us all good.”

So saying, she retired, having expressed no curiosity whatever as to the nature of the very important business in London.

For a moment, left alone, he was at a loss.  Then, snorting, he went to the table and extinguished the lamp.  He was now in darkness.  The light in the hall showed him the position of the door.

He snorted again.  “Oh, very well then!” he muttered.  “If that’s it!...  I’m hanged if I don’t go to London!...  I’m hanged if I don’t go to London!”