Both were astonished and both sat, rather awkwardly, adjusting their financial standards. She took up her knitting and he plied his cigar. They were sitting on boxes outside the stage door in the warm August sunlight. She gave a discreet little cough and said:
“You don’t . . . you didn’t . . . have a wife, did you?”
“No. I have never had a wife.”
“Think of that now. . . . You’d have a house-keeper maybe?”
“A married couple looked after me.”
“Well, I never! Well, there’s never any knowing, is there?”
He had learned by this time that there was nothing at all behind Mrs. Copas’s cryptic utterances. If there were anything she could arrive at it by circumlocution, and in her own good time would make it plain. Her next remark might have some connection with her previous train of thought or it might not. She said in a toneless, detached voice:
“And to think of you turning up with our Matilda. And they do say how everything’s for the best. . . . It’s a pity business is so bad here, isn’t it?”
Business was very bad. The faithful few of the district who always patronized Mr. Copas year after year attended, but they amounted to no more than fifty, while the young people were drawn off by the kinematograph. They even sank so far as to admit children free for three nights in the hope that their chatter would incite their parents to come and share the wonders they had seen. On the fourth night only four old women and a boy paid for admission.