"Oh, it's you?"
To which Mr. Raeburn replied: "Yes, Flo, it's me," and began to sing "Ta-ra-ra—boom—de—ay."
Even Ruby O'Connor, who, in earlier days at Hagworth Street, used to quell Alfie with terrible threats of a father's vengeance, gave them up as ineffective; for the bland and cheerful Charlie, losing the while not a morsel of blandness or cheerfulness, was fast becoming an object of contemptuous toleration in his own house. He was a weak and unsuccessful man, fond of half-pints and tales of his own prowess, with little to recommend him to his family except an undeniable gift of humorous description. Yet, even with this, he possessed no imagination. He was accustomed to treat the world as he would have treated a spaniel. "Poor old world," he would say in pitying intention; "poor old world." He would pat the universe on its august head as a pedagogue slaps a miniature globe in the schoolroom. He never expected anything from the world, which was just as well, for he certainly never received very much. To his wife's occasional inquiry of amazed indignation, "Why ever did I come to marry you?" he would answer:
"I don't know, Floss. Because you wanted to, I reckon."
"I never wanted to," she would protest.
"Well, you didn't," he would say. "Some people acts funny."
"That's quite right."
Hers was the last word: his, however, the pint of four ale that drowned it.
Jenny at this stage in her life was naturally incapable of grasping the fact of her mother throwing herself away in matrimony; but she was able to ponder the queer result that, however much her mother might be annoyed by Charlie, she did not seem able to get rid of him.
Alfie, with his noise and clumping boots, was an equally unpleasant appendage to her life, but for Alfie she was responsible. In whatever way children came about, it was not to be supposed they happened involuntarily like bedtime or showers of rain. Moreover, mystery hung heavy over their arrival. Edie and Alfie would giggle in corners, look at each other with oddly lighted eyes, and blush when certain subjects arose in conversation. Human agency was implied, and all that talk of strawberry-beds and cabbage leaves so much trickery. Alfie, bad habits and all, was due to her father and mother being married.