Mr. Pinner said he was on it.
‘And as your daughter promises to grow up some day into rather a good-looking girl——’
‘There ain’t much promise about Sally, mum—it’s been performance, performance, and nothing but performance since she was so ’igh.’
‘Oh, well—perhaps it’s not quite as bad as that,’ said the lady addressed, smiling indulgently. ‘Still, I do think she may grow into a good-looking girl, and so near Cambridge you will have to be careful. Your visitor is an undergraduate, of course?’
And Mr. Pinner, afraid of Jocelyn, afraid of his threats of hordes of young men descending on the shop if the engagement were known, said, slipping on the edge of an untruth, but just managing to clear it, ‘Couldn’t say, mum.’
She forced him, however—the woman forced him. ‘What?’ she exclaimed. ‘You can’t say? You don’t know?’
So then he told it without blinking. ‘No, mum,’ he said, his harassed blue eyes on her face. ‘I don’t think the young gentleman did ’appen to mention ’is name.’
And in his heart he cried out to his conscience, ‘If they forces me to, ’ow, ’ow can I ’elp it?’
§
Between these two men, both in a state of extreme nervous tension, Sally passed her last days under her father’s roof, amiably quiescent, completely good. She did as she was told; always she had done as she was told, and it was now a habit. She liked the look of the young man who so unexpectedly was to become her husband, and was pleased that he should be a gentleman. She knew nothing about gentlemen, but she liked the sort of sound their voices made when they talked. At Islington she had preferred the visits to the shop of the clergy for just that reason—the sound their voices made when they talked. She would have been perfectly happy during the fortnight between her first setting eyes on Jocelyn and her marriage to him, if there had been a few more smiles about.