‘I say there’s an end to everything,’ said Mrs. Cupp even more emphatically, crowding the plates noisily on to a tray. ‘And one of them’s my patience.’
Jocelyn stared. Sally, raising her head from her daily task, on which she was at that moment engaged, looked on with the air of a mild, disinterested angel.
‘But what on earth has happened? What’s the matter?’ asked Jocelyn.
‘You only got to cast an eye out of the winder to see what’s the matter,’ said Mrs. Cupp, jerking her elbow in its direction. ‘They don’t collect like that round parties that’s respectable.’
And dropping some forks off the overloaded tray she clattered out of the room.
Jocelyn turned swiftly to Sally. ‘You see?’ he said.
‘See wot?’ asked Sally, who was about to stoop and pick up the forks, but remembered not to just in time.
Yes; see what, indeed. That it was her fault? That this disgrace had been brought on him through her fault? Was that, Jocelyn asked himself, shocked at the tempest of injustice that had for an instant swept him off his feet, what he wanted her to see?
‘I meant,’ he said, ashamed of his unfairness, ‘you heard. You did hear, didn’t you, what the horrible woman was saying?’
Sally nodded. ‘Thinks we ain’t married,’ she said. She seemed quite undisturbed. ‘Well, it ain’t much use thinkin’ we ain’t when we are,’ she remarked.