“All right, then, I’ll go now. I should have been rattling off to town in the cab if you hadn’t stopped me. There! good-night.”
“Sit down. She’s got to hear it. Do you hear, you Janet? He’s a fine boy, our Clive. Sort of Abel, he is, and I’m a kind of Cain, am I? But we shall see. Cries about him, she does, and before her lawful husband. Jealous of him. Do you hear, Janet?”
“Mr Wrigley, pray go,” she cried indignantly.
“My dear madam, I really am trying to go, but you see.”
“A blackguard with his pretty mistress down in Derbyshire. Nice saint!”
Janet turned and her eyes flashed, while Jessop burst into a jeering laugh.
“That bites her. Nobody must look at a pretty girl. She’s everybody, Wrigley. Do you hear? Old Bob Wrigley—I say, wasn’t it Ridley, though?”
“Yes, all the same; but come now, be a good boy, and go to bed. You’re hurting my wrist.”
“Serve you right.”
“But you’re driving the sleeve-links into the flesh.”