‘I’ve told you. I don’t know nothing.’
‘I don’t believe you . . . not if you was at the Pound House. That’s where he gets it.’
‘Well, you know more about it nor me then,’ said Abner.
‘Don’t talk to me like that! I know . . . I’m not a child.’
‘It’s no good talkin’ like that. A chap must take a drop in and out. It’s human nature.’
‘Oh, it isn’t the drink!’ she said. ‘He doesn’t go to that place only for the drink. I should have thought you being with him would keep him straight.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Yes, you do,’ she said, striking the table with her clenched fist. ‘You know . . . you know. . . . It’s that woman!’
‘I don’t know naught of George’s women,’ said Abner obstinately.
‘Then you’ve no eyes,’ she said, with a gesture of scorn. ‘The woman at the Pound House!’ She blazed with a white anger: ‘That dark-eyed devil that’s been after him these months, that Susie Hind . . .’