After a while, a child told him her tale.
“You remember that poor man yesterday I gave half a crown to? Well, what’s half a crown to me? It wasn’t giving him anything really. I mean, I wasn’t missing anything. It wasn’t hurting me. So I thought if this morning I got up at seven o’clock. . . . It sounds silly, because it hasn’t done him any good. But he did have his half-crown, and I—— Well, I’m glad I’m up now, but I do hope it was a deserving case, Jeremy. . . .”
Her husband slid out of bed and picked up her hand.
“I take my hat off,” he said uncertainly.
And, as is so often the way, two days later the pretty pilgrims’ progress came to a violent end.
It was a bleak afternoon, with a sky of concrete and a wind that cut like a lash.
Eve, who had been to the dressmaker’s, was sitting before the fire, reflecting comfortably that in ten days’ time she and Jeremy would be in the South of France.
Her husband entered quickly.
“Sorry I’m late, my darling, but when he’d finished with me he said he was going south, and I was fool enough to offer to drive him down. You know what these artists are. Five-and-twenty minutes he kept me waiting.” He stooped and kissed her. “And—and I’ve a confession to make.”
“Go on,” said Eve, smiling.