Then she began slowly to question him about Alice: what was she like, fair or dark, how tall, the kind of dress she wore—curious details that he had to search his memory to answer. She seemed to be working out for herself the obvious parallel, but never looked at him.
‘Why did you leave them?’ she said at last.
By this time is was no longer difficult to talk to her. He told her continuously the story of his last days at Halesby. She listened eagerly, putting in from time to time a short question for which he could see no reason. He told her of John Fellows’s bouts of drink, of the way in which he had set himself to work through his compensation money, of the day of Dulston Wakes, the boxing booth, the brooch, the moment when he had come blundering down into the kitchen at Alice’s cry for help, the struggle—and the blow with which he had knocked his father out. He even told her of the sovereigns that Alice had slipped into his pocket when he left her.
‘That’s what I sent back to her in that letter,’ he said.
‘Was that all? It was good of you.’
He was silent, and she pressed him again.
‘Why didn’t you go before?’ she said. ‘Why did you stay on there till that happened?’
‘I dunno’,’ he said. ‘I reckon I’d got to see it through. That football business turned me up.’
‘You wanted to go before?’
‘Yes, I was pretty well sick of it. Any one would have been.’