If you go to a laundry in the environment of Fetter Lane, it is like putting your clothes in pawn. You can't get them back again until the bill is paid, and there are times when that is inconvenient.
That was why Mrs. Rowse was lingering. She had paid for the washing. Whenever money was due to her, she lingered. It is a subtle method of reproach, a gentle process of reminder which at first scarcely explains itself.
On the first occasion when she had adopted it, John had thought she was losing her memory, that her wits were gathering. Out of the corner of his eye, he had nervously watched her going aimlessly about the room, dusting the same object perhaps six separate times. When a woman is paid seven shillings a week for keeping one's rooms tidy, such industry as this might well be a sign of madness.
At length, unable to bear it any longer, John had said that he thought she had done enough. Despairingly then, she had folded up the duster, put it away, taken an unconscionable time in the pinning on of that black, shabby hat, and finally, but only when at the door itself, she had said:
"Do you think you could spare my wages to-day, sir?"
Now she was lingering again. But he had come to know the signs and meanings of the process. This time, John knew it was the washing. He watched her covertly from behind his paper, hoping against hope that she might tire; for he had not got three and elevenpence, nor three halfpence in the world. But a master in the art of lingering does not know what it means to tire. Just when he thought she must have finished, when she had done all the glass on the mantel-piece for the second time, she went out of the room to the cupboard on the landing where John kept his two-hundredweight of coal and returned with all the rags and pots of paste necessary for the cleaning of the brass.
Here he gave in; the siege was over. Under cover of the newspaper, he detached the latch key from his watch-chain, slipped it into his pocket and rose, concealing the chain within his hand.
"I'm just going out," he said--"for a few moments. Can you wait till I get back?"
She looked as though she could not, as if it were rather encroaching upon the limit of her time to ask her to stay longer, but----
"I expect I can find one or two little things to do for a few moments," she said.