He looked Harry up and down in his nasty, red-haired, contemptuous way, and then he said, “All right, Beckett”—no Mr., mind you—“all right, Beckett; if you’re independent, so am I. I’ll say good-bye to Clara and be off.”
“When you’ve paid your bill,” says Harry.
“Oh, that’ll be all right! I’ll send you a cheque.”
“I don’t want a cheque for twenty-five shillings,” says Harry. “Cash’ll do for me.”
“I haven’t got the cash with me,” says the fellow; “and if my cheque isn’t good enough, you can stop it out of Clara’s wages.”
And with that he walks into the bar, kisses Clara before the customers, sticks his hat on one side, defiant like, and walks out of the place as bold as brass.
And that was the last we saw of Miss Ward’s young man, and the last she saw of him too, poor girl—for bad as we thought him, he turned out to be worse.
A few days after he went, Harry had to go to town to see the brewers, and, having an hour or two to spare after he’d done his business, he thought he’d go and look at Shipsides’ shop, and see what sort of a place it was.
He knew the address, because Miss Ward used to write to her lover at it, and sometimes her letters lay about to be sent to post.
When he got to the street and found the number, it was a grocer’s—but quite a little common shop, full of jam in milk-jugs and sugar-basins, and flashy-looking ornaments given away with a pound of tea; and the name over the door wasn’t Shipsides at all.