At the door of the court Abner rejoined Mary. Mrs Malpas, who had been whispering to the local solicitor, marched past them without speaking, and Mary flushed at this deliberate slight.
‘She won’t speak to me,’ she said. ‘I think that’s too bad! That was Lawyer Harley she was talking to.’
‘Don’t take no notice of her,’ said Abner. ‘That old woman’s half-cracked.’
He went on to tell her that Mick Connor, who had gone to the Buffalo out of curiosity the night before, had heard Mrs Malpas tell one of her customers that if George were sent to Shrewsbury she would employ the best criminal advocate on the circuit, even if it cost her the last penny she possessed. He did not tell her that Mrs Malpas had declared that it was nothing but the proud ways of Mary, ‘that thief’s daughter,’ she called her—that had driven George to his ruin.
‘He didn’t look at me once,’ said Mary on the way home.
‘He’d no call to look at nobody,’ Abner replied.
‘He looked at her,’ said Mary bitterly. ‘He’s strange. I don’t know what to make of him.’
‘That’s natural enough. He didn’t want to see her dragged out in public.’
‘Dragged out in public?’ she cried, with an unusual flush of spirit. ‘What about me?’
They settled down to another placid evening at Wolfpits. The children had enjoyed their day with Mrs Mamble, though Morgan was persuaded with difficulty to go to bed without the coveted warming-pan under his pillow. Mrs Mamble was just preparing to leave them for the night when a knock came to the door, and without waiting for it to be opened to her Mrs Malpas entered. Her walk to Wolfpits over the roadway, now slippery with ice, had exhausted her, so that she looked more like a wraith than a woman. Even so she did not stop to recover her breath. She clenched her hands in the queer gesture that Abner had noticed the evening before, and with trembling wrists began to storm in Mary’s face.