While he spoke he watched Susie with his small keen eyes, sharpened by the habit of observing wild game, waiting for her face to betray to him exactly what she felt toward Abner. But it was not for nothing that Susie had learnt the art of being all things to all men. Badger’s eyes were a little too eager, and she was quick to see it.
‘Why do you want to tell me this, Mr Badger?’ she said slowly.
‘He’s an old friend of yours. You don’t put me off as easy as that!’
‘Then you might have saved yourself the trouble,’ she said, turning her back on him. ‘If you’ve any other dirty stories to tell, I’ll be obliged if you’ll keep them to yourself.’
He flushed darkly, so that she felt she was overdoing it. She came back to him and stood talking of other things, her hand on the table within an inch of his own.
‘I hope you didn’t take any offence,’ she said softly. ‘Only I don’t like to hear my name coupled with a chap of that kind.’
Badger swallowed his liquor with satisfaction. It seemed to him that he had artfully secured his point. He looked Susie up and down, appraising her, lazily satisfied. She had gained a new value in his eyes. He held her in talk, and she loitered by his table, standing on one leg. In taking away his glass she even touched his hand. They were alone in the bar. He caught her and kissed her. Protesting, as a matter of form, she smiled. In her heart she hated him like poison. Her mind was aflame with vague jealousies, for any fool could see that Abner was worth two of this man.
That night she heard the gang from the pipe-track discussing the accident at Bron, winking at each other over the way in which the story had come out. They laughed without condemning. To them it seemed no more than a good joke. When her father’s back was turned the Gunner began to pull her leg about it; but she laughed back at him, giving him coarseness for coarseness, and went on wiping her glasses, humming to herself the refrain of a pantomime tune. She heard herself singing. Her voice sounded toneless and unreal. When she went to bed she could not sleep for fretting. Abner had not been near her for more than a week, and she did not dare to take the risk of sending him a message at his work. She knew that she wanted him. She was not going to lose him without a fight.
Next afternoon she was free, and knowing that Abner would be safely at work, she dressed herself elaborately in her best clothes and a pair of new shoes and set off boldly for Wolfpits. Her hands trembled and her frock was drenched with perspiration as she dressed.
‘Where are you off to, got up like that?’ her father called after her.