“You wouldn’t have come, if we’d waited,” Sylvia maintained. “You’d have been too worried about leaving your mother.”
“I’m still worried about that,” said Arthur, gloomily.
“Why? You can send a post-card to say that you’re all right. Knowing where you are won’t make up for your being away. In any case, you’d have had to go away soon. You couldn’t have spent your whole life in that house at Hampstead.”
“Well, I think this running away will bring us bad luck.”
Sylvia made a dramatic pause and dropped her valise on the pavement.
“Go home, then. Go home and leave me alone. If you can’t enjoy yourself, I’d rather you went home. I can’t bear to be with somebody who is not enjoying himself as much as I am.”
“You can’t be enjoying this waking about all night with two bags and a cat,” Arthur insisted. “But I’m not going home without you. If you want to go on, I shall go on, too. I’m feeling rather tired. I expect I shall enjoy myself more to-morrow.”
Sylvia picked up her valise again. “I hope you will, I’m sure,” she said. “You’re spoiling the fun by grumbling all the time like this. What is there to grumble at? Just a small bag which makes your arm ache. You ought to be glad you haven’t got mine to carry as well as your own.”
After another quarter of an hour among the ill-favored streets Sylvia called a rest; this time they withdrew from the pavement into the area of an unoccupied house, where they leaned against the damp brick wall, quite exhausted, and heard without interest the footsteps of the people who went past above. Maria began to mew and Sylvia let her out of the basket. A lean and amorous tom-cat in pursuit of love considered that Maria had prejudiced his chance of success, and their recriminations ended in a noisy scuffle during which the lid of a dust-bin in the next area was upset with a loud clatter; somebody, throwing open a window, emptied a utensil partly over Arthur.
“Don’t make such a noise. It was only a jug,” Sylvia whispered. “You’ll wake up all the houses.”