"What you come after?" asked the engineer ferociously.
"After my rent," answered Alf, shouting from fear. Joe looked dangerous, but loosed his hold.
"How much?" he asked, taking a bag from his pocket.
"Sixteen shilling. You can see for yourself."
Obliging with the obligingness of the man who is scared to death, Alf produced his book. Joe, lowering still, examined it. Then he paid the money into the other's hand. That done he escorted Alf policemanwise to the bottom of Borough Lane.
"If A find you mouchin round here again A'll break your bloody little back across ma knee," he told the other, shouldering over him. "A mean it, sitha!"
Alf withdrew up the hill towards the Star. At a safe distance he paused and called back confidentially, his face white and sneering,
"Quite the yard-dog, eh? Bought her, ain't yer?"
Joe returned to the cottage and entered.
At the head of the stairs a lovely little figure in a white gown that enfolded her hugely like a cloud, making billows about the woolly red slippers which had been Bess Trupp's Christmas gift, smiled at him.