“Now I have to go to Heath’s the butcher’s,” said Rachel, determined at all costs to be a woman and not a silly baby.  After that plain announcement her cowardice would have no chance to invent an excuse for not going into another shop.

But she added—­

“And that’ll be all.”

“I know Master Bob Heath.  Known him a long time,” said Louis Fores, with amusement in his voice, as though to imply that he could relate strange and titillating matters about Heath if he chose, and indeed that he was a mine of secret lore concerning the citizens.

The fact was that he had travelled once to Woore races with the talkative Heath, and that Heath had introduced him to his brother Stanny Heath, a local book-maker of some reputation, from whom Louis had won five pounds ten during the felicitous day.  Ever afterwards Bob Heath had effusively saluted Louis on every possible occasion, and had indeed once stopped him in the street and said:  “My brother treated you all right, didn’t he?  Stanny’s a true sport.”  And Louis had to be effusive also.  It would never do to be cold to a man from whose brother you had won—­and received—­five pounds ten on a racecourse.

So that when Louis followed Rachel into Heath’s shop at the top of Duck Bank the fat and happy Heath gave him a greeting in which astonishment and warm regard were mingled.  The shop was empty of customers, and also it contained little meat, for Heath’s was not exactly a Saturday-night trade.  Bob Heath, clothed from head to foot in slightly blood-stained white, stood behind one hacked counter, and Mrs. Heath, similarly attired, and rather stouter, stood behind the other; and each possessed a long steel which hung from an ample loose girdle.

Heath, a man of forty, had a salute somewhat military in gesture, though conceived in a softer, more accommodating spirit.  He raised his chubby hand to his forehead, but all the muscles of it were lax and the fingers loosely curved; at the same time he drew back his left foot and kicked up the heel a few inches.  Louis amiably responded.  Rachel went direct to Mrs. Heath, a woman of forty-five.  She had never before seen Heath in the shop.

“Doing much with the gees lately, Mr. Fores?” Heath inquired in a cheerful, discreet tone.

“Not me!”

“Well, I can’t say I’ve had much luck myself, sir.”

The conversation was begun in proper form.  Through it Louis could hear Rachel buying a cutlet, and then another cutlet, from Mrs. Heath, and protesting that five-pence was a good price and all she desired to pay even for the finest cutlet in the shop.  And then Rachel asked about sweetbreads.  Heath’s voice grew more and more confidential and at length, after a brief pause, he whispered—­

“Ye’re not married, are ye, sir?  Excuse the liberty.”

It was a whisper, but one of those terrible, miscalculated whispers that can be heard for miles around, like the call of the cuckoo.  Plainly Heath was not aware of the identity of Rachel Fleckring.  And in his world, which was by no means the world of his shop and his wife, it was incredible that a man should run round shopping with a woman on a Saturday night unless he was a husband on unescapable duty.