“It’s no use your killing me, because you’ll only be hanged. It’s no use your stabbing me, because you’ll go to prison. If you hit me, I shall hit you back. You thought I was afraid of you. I wasn’t. I’m more afraid of a bug than I am of you. I saw a bug to-day; so I’m going to leave this house. The weather’s getting warmer. You and the bugs have come out together. Come along, Danny, dry your coat and tell me a story that will make me laugh. Tell me the story of the Jew who died of grief because he bought his wife a new hat and found his best friend had bought her one that day and he might have saved his money. Do make me laugh, Danny.”
They went to the Middlesex music-hall that evening, and Danny did not suck his teeth once. The next morning he told Sylvia that he had been to visit a friend who wished very much to meet her, and that he proposed to introduce him that afternoon, if she agreed. He was a fellow in a good way of business, the son of a bootmaker in Drury Lane, quite a superior sort of fellow and one by whom she could not fail to be impressed; his name was Jay Cohen. The friend arrived toward four o’clock, and Danny on some excuse left him with Sylvia. He had big teeth and round, prominent eyes; his boots were very glossy and sharply pointed at the toes, with uppers of what looked like leopard-skin. Observing Sylvia’s glances directed to his boots, he asked with a smile if she admired the latest thing. She confessed they were rather too late for her taste, and Mr. Cohen excused them as a pair sent back to his father by a well-known music-hall comedian, who complained of their pinching him. Sylvia said it was lucky they only pinched him; she should not have been astonished if they had bitten him.
“You’re a Miss Smartie, aren’t you?” said Jay Cohen.
The conversation languished for a while, but presently he asked Sylvia why she was so unkind to his friend Danny.
“What do you mean, ‘unkind’?” she repeated. “Unkind what about?”
Mr. Cohen smiled in a deprecating way. “He’s a good boy, is Danny. Real good. He is, really. All the girls are mad about Danny. You know, smart girls, girls that get around. He’s very free, too. Money’s nothing to Danny when he’s out to spend. His father’s got a tobacconist’s shop in the Caledonian Road. A good business—a very good business. Danny told me what the turn-over was once, and I was surprised. I remember I thought what a rare good business it was. Well, Danny’s feeling a bit upset to-day, and he came round to see me early this morning. He must have been very upset, because it was very early, and he said to me that he was mad over a girl and would I speak for him? He reckoned he’d made a big mistake and he wanted to put it right, but he was afraid of being laughed at, because the young lady in question was a bit high-handed. He wants to marry you. There it is right out. He’d like to marry you at once, but he’s afraid of his father, and he thought....”
Mr. Cohen broke off suddenly in his proposal and listened: “What’s that?”
“It sounds like some one shouting down-stairs,” Sylvia said. “But you often hear rows going on down there. There was a row yesterday because a woman bit on a stone in a pie and broke her tooth.”
“That’s Jubie’s voice,” said Mr. Cohen, blinking his eyes and running his hands nervously through his sleek hair.
“Who’s Jubie?”