"Ere, Alf!" he said hoarsely. "We can't go on like this. Tain't in nature. After all, we're brothers."
The two had not spoken since the one had possessed the woman the other had desired.
Alf now showed himself curiously complacent.
"I am a Christian all right," he confided to his brother; and added with the naïve self-satisfaction of the megalomaniac, as he shook hands: "I wish there was more like me, I do reelly."
"Come in, then," said Ern, who was not listening. "I can't abear to see you out here such a night as this and all."
Alf came in.
The two brothers sat over the fire in the kitchen, Alf uplifted, his gaitered legs crossed. He looked about him brightly with that curious proprietory air of his.
"You've a decent little crib here, Ern, I see," he said.
"None so bad," Ernie answered briefly.
"Done it up nice too," the other continued. "Did your landlord do that now?"