"D'you know she's had a love-child?" she shrilled, discordant as a squeaking wheel.
The old gentleman, fumbling at the door of his study, dropped his bearded chin, and beamed at the angry woman, moonwise over his spectacles.
"Why shouldn't she?" he asked.
There was something crisp, almost curt, in the interrogation.
"But she's not respectable!"
Again he dropped his chin and seemed to gape blankly.
"Why should she be?" he asked.
She heard the key turn, and knew that she was locked out for the night.
Later she crept in list-slippers to the door and knocked with the slow and solemn knuckles of fate, a calculated pause between each knock.
"Alf's going up, Ern's going down," she said, nodding with grim relish. "Good-night, old dad."