"Truth—you grey and godless lump of horror! Truth—who be you to talk of truth? After this the very word 'truth' did ought to rust your tongue black and choke you! Not a word of that will I believe. 'Twas me you meant; an' when I heard it, I tell you the sky went round like a wheel. I catched hold of a clothes-post to stop myself from falling in a heap. And now if cherubims in a flaming, fiery chariot come down for me from heaven, I wouldn't go. Nothing would take me—I'd defy death for my indignation! I'll see you out yet, you wife-murderer, you vagabond, you cut-throat dog of a man—ess fay, I'll see you out if I've got to wait twenty thousand years to do it!'
"Here," said Jarratt Weekes to Daniel Brendon, "me and you will get from this. When she lets go, you might as well try to put in a word with a hurricane as with her."
"All the same, it was Churchward's old worn-out dog, as he'll testify to," said Philip. "The creature's suffering, and she'll be killed to-morrow morn; an' that's evidence for anybody who's got a level mind and no grudge against me. Be it sense or reason that I'd say a thing like that to a neighbour—even if I thought it?"
"How you can sit there with your owl's eyes a-glaring——" began Mrs. Weekes—then Daniel followed Jarratt.
"I'll come back along for you presently," he said to Sarah Jane. "You stop here till we're home from the committee."
A moment later he explained his purpose, and Weekes raised no objection.
"'Tis a silly business altogether," he said. "I so good as swore I'd not join 'em again myself; but if the thing's to be, 'tis well there should be a little sense among these foolish old men. You can take Prout's place and welcome. Churchward will try to talk Latin about it when he hears, and pull a long face, and say 'tis irregular or some rot. But if I tell him I wish it, he'll cave in. Last meeting was at his home; but we turned the room into a public-house bar before we'd done with it, and so his daughter won't let us assemble there again. Quite right too."
"A very fine woman she is—so Sarah Jane tells me."
"She is—and plenty of sense. In fact——"
Jarratt broke off and changed the subject; but Daniel, without tact, returned to it.