So, taken altogether, it was a pretty family party at Peckham.
The stories of drunkenness accounting for the quarrels became more frequent, and if Mrs. Thompson visited any of the houses she had been accustomed to drop into at Peckham, Mrs. Ward was quickly at her heels.
One day when she went to Mrs. Long’s, the old woman haunted the house till she came out. That very day Mrs. Thompson seemed terribly distressed. She appeared to have some dreadful load on her mind, which she was anxious to communicate to some one. At last she burst out with a cry—
“Oh, Mrs. Long, if I could only tell you everything—if I could but find the courage to make you acquainted with all I know!”
Mrs. Long, who was getting rather uneasy about Peace, for whom she had a strong but unaccountable aversion, did not encourage her to say any more.
She was afraid it would get her into trouble, as she had been given to understand that Thompson—it is immaterial whether we call him Peace or Thompson—disapproved of his wife’s visits to the house.
This he knew through Mrs. Ward, the constant spy upon the other’s movements.
Every effort was now made to keep Mrs. Thompson a close prisoner in the house.
The Longs at that time kept a dairy, and used to supply the Thompsons with their milk, where the little girl delivered the milk in the morning.
Mrs. Thompson would come for it, but at her back was the old woman to see and hear what passed.