Mary said: “It wouldn’t be right,
dear. The children are in my charge; how could
I send them back to their mother in the care of a
strange man? And it wouldn’t be right to
myself, either. It would look as if I admitted
myself in the wrong. No; I must, must face her.”
George’s torch guttered; gave gloom again.
He tried a second: “Well, I’ll come
with you. That’s a great idea. She
won’t dare say much while I’m there.”
“Oh, it wouldn’t be right, Georgie.
You oughtn’t to come to the house—to
see her—after what you’ve done to
the detestable Bob. No, I’ll go alone and
I’ll go now. You shall come as far as the
top of the road and there wait.”
“And then?” George asked.
This was to research the map for rest-houses and for
fortunes that might be won after the ogre castle had
been passed.
Mary conned and peered until the strain squeezed a
little moisture in her eyes. “I don’t
know,” she said faintly.
Her bold George had to know. “It won’t
be for very long, dear old girl. You must find
another situation. Till then a lodging. I
know a place where a man I know used to have digs.
A jolly old landlady. I’ll raise some money—I’ll
borrow it.”
Mary tried to brighten. “Yes, and I’ll
go to that agency again. I must, because I shall
have no character, you see. I’ll tell her
everything quite truthfully, and I think she’ll
be nice.”
“It’s no good waiting,” George said.
His voice had the sound of a funeral bell.
Mary arose slowly, white. She said: “Come
along.”
With a tumbril rumble in their ears, the children
dancing ahead, they started for Palace Gardens.
The groans and curses of her adored Bob, his bulgy
mouth and shutting eyes, his tender nose and the encrimsoned
water where he had layed his wounds—these
had so acted upon Mrs. Chater’s nerves, plunged
her into such vortex of hysteria, that the manner
of her reception of Mary was true reflection of her
fears, nothing dissembled.
Withdrawing her agitated face from the dining-room
window as Mary and the children approached, she bounded
heavily to the door; flung it ajar; collapsed to her
knees upon the mat; clasped David and Angela to that
heaving bosom.
“Safe!” she wailed. “Safe!
Thank God, my little lambs are safe!”
Distraught she swayed and hugged; kissed and moaned
again.
David pressed away. “You smell like whisky,
mummie,” he said.
It was a dash of icy water on a fainting fit; wonderfully
it strung the demented woman’s senses.
She pushed her little lambs from her; fixed Mary with
awful eye.
“So you’ve come back—Miss?”
Mary quivered.
“I wonder you dared. I wonder you had the
boldness to face me after your wicked behaviour.
You’ve got nothing to say for yourself.
I’m not surprised—”
