ing your face when you didn't know I was lookin'—”
“Well, it's all hopeless, of course. I don't suppose I shall ever see her again . . . but that's what's made this looking for work so difficult—I've been wanting to get on—and every day seems to place her further away. And then when I get hopeless these other devils come round and say ‘Oh well, you can't get her, you know. That's as impossible as anything—so you'd better have your fling while you can. . . .’ My God! I'm a beast!”
The cry broke from him with a bitterness that filled the bare little room.
Stephen, after a little, got up and put his hand on the boy's shoulder.
“Nobody ain't going to touch you while I'm here,” he said simply as though he were challenging devils and men alike.
Peter looked up and smiled. “What an old brick you are,” he said. “Do you remember that fight Christmas time, years ago? . . . You're always like that. . . I've been an ass to bother you with it all and while we've got each other things can't be so bad.” He got up and stretched his arms.
“Well, it's bedtime, especially as you've got to be off early to that old restaurant—”
Stephen stepped back from him.
“I've been meaning to tell you,” he said, “that's off. The place ain't paying and the boss shut four of us down to-night . . . I'm not to go back . . . Peter, boy,” he finished, almost triumphantly. “We're up against it . . . I've got a quid in my pocket and that's all there is to it.”
They faced one another whilst the candle behind them guttered and blew in the window cracks, and the cluster of stars, still caught in the dirty roofs and chimneys of Bucket Lane, twinkled, desperately—in vain.
