“Yi—but you can’t deny it,” said Jinny.
“I can if I’ve a mind.”
His father looked at him inquiringly.
“It’s no more mine than it is Bill Bower’s, or Ted Slaney’s, or six or seven on ’em,” said Harry to his father.
And the father nodded silently.
“That’ll not get you out of it, in court,” said Jinny.
Upstairs Fanny evaded all the thrusts made by his mother, and did not declare her hand. She tidied her hair, washed her hands, and put the tiniest bit of powder on her face, for coolness, there in front of Mrs. Goodall’s indignant gaze. It was like a declaration of independence. But the old woman said nothing.
They came down to Sunday tea, with sardines and tinned salmon and tinned peaches, besides tarts and cakes. The chatter was general. It concerned the Nixon family and the scandal.
“Oh, she’s a foul-mouthed woman,” said Jinny of Mrs. Nixon. “She may well talk about God’s holy house, she had. It’s first time she’s set foot in it, ever since she dropped off from being converted. She’s a devil and she always was one. Can’t you remember how she treated Bob’s children, mother, when we lived down in the Buildings? I can remember when I was a little girl she used to bathe them in the yard, in the cold, so that they shouldn’t splash the house. She’d half kill them if they made a mark on the floor, and the language she’d use! And one Saturday I can remember Garry, that was Bob’s own girl, she ran off when her stepmother was going to bathe her—ran off without a rag of clothes on—can you remember, mother? And she hid in Smedley’s closes—it was the time of mowing-grass—and nobody could find her. She hid out there all night, didn’t she, mother? Nobody could find her. My word, there was a talk. They found her on Sunday morning—”
“Fred Coutts threatened to break every bone in the woman’s body, if she touched the children again,” put in the father.