“You wear your socks properly, Harold,” she said; “it’s all I can do to mend this pair.” Her eyes were china-blue, round like saucers; her voice had the monotony of one brought up to minimise emotion. A farmer’s daughter, young Mellesh had become engaged to her during a holiday in Somerset. Pale himself, from office and the heat, he thought how pale she looked.
“The heat’s dreadful, isn’t it?” she said. “Sometimes I wish we’d never had baby. It does tie you in the evenings. I am looking forward to Whitsuntide, that I am.”
Young Mellesh, tall and straggly, bent over and kissed her forehead. How on earth to let her know that he had ‘blewed’ their holiday? He was realising that he had done an awful thing. Perhaps—oh! surely—she would understand how he couldn’t sit and see that girl ‘jugged’ before his eyes for want of it! But not until the end of their small supper did he say abruptly:
“I got quite upset this morning, Alice. Had to go down to the police court about that car smash I told you of, and afterwards I saw them run in a lot of those Piccadilly girls. It fair sickened me to see the way they treat them.”
His wife looked up; her face was childlike.
“Why, what do they do to them?”
“Quod them for speakin’ to men in the street.”
“I s’pose they’re up to no good.”
Irritated by the matter-of-factness in her voice, he went on: