"It's quite all right. He did nothing but cover up the place with a bit of cyanide gauze."
Instantly, in his own esteem, he regained perfection as a father. Of [57] course the bite was nothing! Had he not said so from the first? Had he not been quite sure throughout that the bite was nothing?
"Then why did you sit up?" he asked, and there was a faint righteous challenge in his tone.
"I was anxious about you. I was afraid—"
"Didn't Stirling tell you I had some business?"
"I forget—"
"I told him to, anyhow.... Important business."
"It must have been," said Nellie, in an inscrutable voice.
She rose and gathered together her paraphernalia, and he saw that she was wearing the damnable white apron. The close atmosphere of the home enveloped and stifled him once more. How different was this exasperating interior from the large jolly freedom of the Empire Music Hall, and from the whisky, cigarettes and masculinity of that private room at the Turk's Head!
"It was!" he repeated grimly and resentfully. "Very important! And I'll tell you another thing. I shall probably have to go to London."