“Morlandson, Dr. Morlandson,” said Mr. Tovey. “Lord, whenever I eats anything as disagrees with me I dreams of his face a-looking at us from the dock. Fair gave me the creeps, it did, for a long time after. We found him guilty, and I couldn’t help looking at him when the judge put on his black cap and sentenced him. Ugh!”
“But they didn’t ’ang ’im after all,” remarked Mrs. Tovey.
“No, he was reprieved, I don’t rightly know why. Because he’d been a big pot in his way, I suppose. Twenty years hard he got, though, and serve ’im right. This bloke I’m telling you about won’t get off so easy, though.”
Mr. Tovey returned to the perusal of his paper, and the evening wore on, the silence of the cosy kitchen broken only at intervals by the voice of Mr. Tovey, reading in a halting voice some more than usually spicy extract to his wife. Tea-time came and went, and still Ivy made no appearance. It was nearly nine o’clock when Mr. Tovey referred to her absence. “I can’t think where that girl’s got to,” he said irritably. “She’s no call to be out all this time.”
“Ted’ll have taken her home to have a bite of supper,” returned Mrs. Tovey equably. “His father likes to have her round there, cheers him up, she does. She’ll be back before long, never you worry.”
The reply which sprang to Mr. Tovey’s lips was checked by the urgent ringing of the telephone bell in the shop, separated from the kitchen by a door kept locked on Sundays.
“Hullo! What’s that?” he enquired in a startled tone. Mrs. Tovey had already moved towards the door. “I’ll go and see,” she replied shortly. Her husband, listening intently, could hear her steps on the bare boards, the sudden cessation of the ringing as she took up the receiver, her voice as she answered, then a pause.
Then he heard her call him from the other room. “Somebody wants to speak to you, Jim.”
With a muttered objurgation he dragged himself from his chair and went into the shop. His wife handed him the instrument. “Hullo!” he said and for a moment stood listening.
“Yes, I’m James Tovey.” A long pause, while Mrs. Tovey vainly tried to make sense of the faint sounds which reached her ears. “What’s that? Oh! a man, you say, thank the Lord for that! I thought for the moment it might be my daughter, she’s out a bit late to-night. Yes! I’ll be along at once.”