In another part of the town, near Sneinton Church, another girl came to
the door to look at the night. She was tall and slender, dressed with
the severe accuracy which marks the girl of superior culture. Her hair
was arranged with simplicity about the long, pale, cleanly cut face.
She leaned forward very slightly to glance down the street, listening.
She very carefully preserved the appearance of having come quite
casually to the door, yet she lingered and lingered and stood very
still to listen when she heard a footstep, but when it proved to be
only a common man, she drew herself up proudly and looked with a small
smile over his head. He hesitated to glance into the open hall, lighted
so spaciously with a scarlet-shaded lamp, and at the slim girl in brown
silk lifted up before the light. But she, she looked over his head. He
passed on.
Presently she started and hung in suspense. Somebody was crossing the
road. She ran down the steps in a pretty welcome, not effuse, saying in
quick, but accurately articulated words: “Will! I began to think you’d
gone to the fair. I came out to listen to it. I felt almost sure you’d
gone. You’re coming in, aren’t you?” She waited a moment anxiously. “We
expect you to dinner, you know,” she added wistfully.
The man, who had a short face and spoke with his lip curling up on one
side, in a drawling speech with ironically exaggerated intonation,
replied after a short hesitation:
“I’m awfully sorry, I am, straight, Lois. It’s a shame. I’ve got to go
round to the biz. Man proposes—the devil disposes.” He turned aside
with irony in the darkness.
“But surely, Will!” remonstrated the girl, keenly disappointed.
“Fact, Lois!—I feel wild about it myself. But I’ve got to go down to
the works. They may be getting a bit warm down there, you know”—he
jerked his head in the direction of the fair. “If the Lambs get
frisky!—they’re a bit off about the work, and they’d just be in their
element if they could set a lighted match to something——”
“Will, you don’t think——!” exclaimed the girl, laying her hand on his
arm in the true fashion of romance, and looking up at him earnestly.
“Dad’s not sure,” he replied, looking down at her with gravity. They
remained in this attitude for a moment, then he said:
“I might stop a bit. It’s all right for an hour, I should think.”
She looked at him earnestly, then said in tones of deep disappointment
and of fortitude: “No, Will, you must go. You’d better go——”
“It’s a shame!” he murmured, standing a moment at a loose end. Then,
glancing down the street to see he was alone, he put his arm round her
waist and said in a difficult voice: “How goes it?”
She let him keep her for a moment, then he kissed her as if afraid of
what he was doing. They were both uncomfortable.
“Well——!” he said at length.
“Good night!” she said, setting him free to go.
He hung a moment near her, as if ashamed. Then “Good night,” he
answered, and he broke away. She listened to his footsteps in the
night, before composing herself to turn indoors.
“Helloa!” said her father, glancing over his paper as she entered the
dining-room. “What’s up, then?”
“Oh, nothing,” she replied, in her calm tones. “Will won’t be here to
dinner tonight.”
“What, gone to the fair?”
“No.”
“Oh! What’s got him then?”
Lois looked at her father, and answered:
“He’s gone down to the factory. They are afraid of the hands.”
Her father looked at her closely.
“Oh, aye!” he answered, undecided, and they sat down to dinner.