Bessie (Steps back).  You! . ..  Harry!

Harry (Amused, dry tone).  Got hold of my name, eh?  Been making friends with the old man?

Bessie (Distressed).  Yes...  I... sometimes. . . (Rapidly!) He’s our landlord.

Harry (Scornfully).  Owns both them rabbit hutches, does he?  Just a thing he’d be proud of... (Earnest.) And now you had better tell me all about that chap who’s coming to-morrow.  Know anything of him?  I reckon there’s more than one in that little game.  Come!  Out with it! (Chaffing.) I don’t take no... from women.

Bessie (Bewildered).  Oh!  It’s so difficult...  What had I better do?...

Harry (Good-humoured).  Make a clean breast of it.

Bessie (Wildly to herself).  Impossible! (Starts.) You don’t understand.  I must think—­see—­try to—­I, I must have time.  Plenty of time.

Harry.  What for?  Come.  Two words.  And don’t be afraid for yourself.  I ain’t going to make it a police job.  But it’s the other fellow that’ll get upset when he least expects it.  There’ll be some fun when he shows his mug here to-morrow. (Snaps fingers.) I don’t care that for the old man’s dollars, but right is right.  You shall see me put a head on that coon, whoever he is.

Bessie (Wrings hands slightly).  What had I better do? (Suddenly to Harry.) It’s you—­you yourself that we—­that he’s waiting for.  It’s you who are to come to-morrow.

Harry (Slowly).  Oh! it’s me! (Perplexed.) There’s something there I can’t understand.  I haven’t written ahead or anything.  It was my chum who showed me the advertisement with the old boy’s address, this very morning—­in London.

Bessie (Anxious).  How can I make it plain to you without... (Bites her lip, embarrassed.) Sometimes he talks so strangely.

Harry (Expectant).  Does he?  What about?

Bessie.  Only you.  And he will stand no contradicting.

Harry.  Stubborn.  Eh?  The old man hasn’t changed much from what I can remember. (They stand looking at each other helplessly.)

Bessie.  He’s made up his mind you would come back . . . to-morrow.

Harry.  I can’t hang about here till morning.  Got no money to get a bed. 
Not a cent.  But why won’t to-day do?

Bessie.  Because you’ve been too long away.

Harry (With force).  Look here, they fairly drove me out.  Poor mother nagged at me for being idle, and the old man said he would cut my soul out of my body rather than let me go to sea.

Bessie (Murmurs).  He can bear no contradicting.

Harry (Continuing).  Well, it looked as tho’ he would do it too.  So I went. (Moody.) It seems to me sometimes I was born to them by a mistake... in that other rabbit hutch of a house.

Bessie (A little mocking).  And where do you think you ought to have been born by rights?