Sam visited the premises, on the day after the Club died, to wipe up the mess, thriftily to salve some untouched edibles for a coming wedding-feast, and by receiving and installing the bed to dedicate the house to better uses. Then he put the key in his pocket and took it to George. He had kept his bargain and now it was for George to keep his.
There remained the question of Anne, and as a preliminary to its solution Sam had recommended Madge to look peaked. Madge, naturally inclined to that condition, had no difficulty in accentuating its appearance by recourse to the vinegar bottle until even Anne, intolerant as she was of small weaknesses, had to own that Madge looked unhappy and unwell.
On the night before her wedding, Madge shut herself up in her bedroom whence the sounds as of a very ecstasy of woe penetrated to the kitchen. Yet her woe was not ecstatic and hardly woe at all. She wept because she was going to be married next day, because when one is going to be married next day one weeps. One brims with undefinable emotion and overflows into tears.
But Anne, listening from the kitchen, where she sat with Sam, was moved to unaccustomed softness. “That girl is fretting sadly,” she said. “It’s a mort of trouble to be taking over a wastrel like George Chappie.”
“Mother,” said Sam speculatively, “I wonder whether you have ever considered the influence of matter over mind?”
“I’m considering the influence of something that does not matter,” she replied. “The influence of George Chappie.”
“Suppose,” said Sam, “suppose that George Chappie lived in a decent house of his own, with furniture that he took a pride in, instead of in those awful lodgings of his. Don’t you think that he would live up to his surroundings? Don’t you think that it would make a man of him?”
“George Chappie is as far from having a decent house as he is from wedding our Madge.”
“That’s true,” said Sam, “as far—and as near.”
“As near?” asked Anne suspiciously. “Sithee, Sam, have you been up to something?”