no longer in the same position. I can't be sure of my two pounds a week any more and so it wouldn't be right for me to live in a place like this.”
“If it's expense that you're thinking about,” she answered him grimly, “you're perfectly welcome to stay on here and pay me when you can. I'm sure that one day with so clever a young man—”
“That's awfully good of you, Mrs. Brockett, but of course I couldn't hear of anything like that.” For the third time that evening he had to fight against a disposition to blow his nose and be absurd. They were, both of them, increasingly grim with every word that they spoke and any outside observer would have supposed that they were the deadliest of enemies.
“Of course,” she began again, “there's a room that I could let you have at the back of the house that's only four shillings a week and really you'd be doing me a kindness in taking it off my hands. I'm sure—”
“No, there's more in it than that,” he answered. “I've got to go away—right away. It's time I had a change of scene. It's good for me to get along a bit by myself. You've all been too kind to me, spoilt me—”
She stood up and faced him sternly. “In all my years,” she said, “I've never spoilt anybody yet and I'm not likely to be going to begin now. Spoilt you! Bah!” She almost snorted at him—but there were tears in her eyes.
“I'm not a philanthropist,” she went on more dryly than ever, “but I like to have you about the house—you keep the lodgers contented and the babies quiet. I'm sure,” and the little break in her voice was the first sign of submission, “that we've been very good friends these seven years and it isn't everywhere that one can pick up friends for the asking—”
“You've been splendid to me,” he answered. “But it isn't as though I were going away altogether—you'll see me back in a week or two. And—and—I say I shall make a fool of myself if I go on talking like this—”
He suddenly gripped her hand and wrung it again and again—then he burst away from her, leaving her standing there in the middle of the room.
The old black bag was very soon packed, his possessions
