“Th’ peen’s commin’ on again, I tell yer. I’ll kill her for it.”
He was completely out of his mind. She struggled with him to prevent his going to the stairs. When she escaped from him, he was shouting and raving, she beckoned to her neighbour, a girl of twenty-four, who was cleaning the window across the road.
Ethel Mellor was the daughter of a well-to-do check-weighman. She ran across in fear to Mrs Horsepool. Hearing the man raving, people were running out in the street and listening. Ethel hurried upstairs. Everything was clean and pretty in the young home.
Willy was staggering round the room, after the slowly retreating Lucy, shouting:
“Kill her! Kill her!”
“Mr Horsepool!” cried Ethel, leaning against the bed, white as the sheets, and trembling. “Whatever are you saying?”
“I tell yer it’s ’er fault as th’ peen comes on—I tell yer it is! Kill ’er—kill ’er!”
“Kill Mrs Horsepool!” cried the trembling girl. “Why, you’re ever so fond of her, you know you are.”
“The peen—I ha’e such a lot o’ peen—I want to kill ’er.”
He was subsiding. When he sat down his wife collapsed in a chair, weeping noiselessly. The tears ran down Ethel’s face. He sat staring out of the window; then the old, hurt look came on his face.