“Some people”—said Bill, reflectively, but with a tinge of indignation in his tone, as they crossed the street—“some people can afford to ride in trams.
“What’s your trouble, Mrs Aspinall—if it’s a fair thing to ask?” said Bill, as they turned the corner.
This was all she wanted, and more; and when, about a mile later, she paused for breath, he drew a long one, gave a short whistle, and said:
“Well, it’s red-hot!”
Thus encouraged, she told her story again, and some parts of it for the third and fourth and even fifth time—and it grew longer, as our stories have a painful tendency to do when we re-write them with a view to condensation.
But Bill heroically repeated that it was “red-hot.”
“And I dealt off the grocer for fifteen years, and the wood-and-coal man for ten, and I lived in that house nine years last Easter Monday and never owed a penny before,” she repeated for the tenth time.
“Well, that’s a mistake,” reflected Bill. “I never dealt off nobody more’n twice in my life.... I heerd you was married again, Mrs Aspinall—if it’s a right thing to ask?”
“Wherever did you hear that? I did get married again—to my sorrow.”
“Then you ain’t Mrs Aspinall—if it’s a fair thing to ask?”