Nat closed the door behind him with a faint sigh. It was the first touch of that depression which was to seize him in such a mighty clutch later in the day. Susy, in spite of herself, felt dull after he had left her. She wondered if she should go to church, but decided against this effort, and seating herself in the window began to unpick the trimming off an old hat, and to put it on again in a fresher style. She then warmed some tea for her dinner, and boiled an egg to eat with her stale bread and butter. Afterwards she took up a penny novelette which she had borrowed from her landlady, and tried to interest herself in the impossible story which it contained. The hero of the tale was of course a duke, and the heroine was in a very slightly more exalted position than Susy herself. The duke loved the maiden, and the romance ended in a brilliant wedding, in a shower of rice, and old satin slippers. Susy threw down the novelette with an impatient sigh. With all her faults she had plenty of sense, and the mawkish, impossible tale sickened her.
“I call it stuff,” she said to herself. “Dooks don’t marry gels like me. I’d a sight rayther read about a costermonger. A costermonger’s flesh and blood to me, a dook ain’t nothing but a sort of a sperit. Oh, my word, is that you, Nat? ’Ow you did startle me!”
“I come in quietly enough,” said Nat. “I suppose I needn’t come into my own room on tiptoe, need I?”
Susy gave her brother a long attentive stare.
“My, how crusty you’ve turned!” she exclaimed in her mocking voice. “Wot’s up with yer? ’As Jill been giving yer a spice of her mind? I allers said that gel ’ad the ’eart of a tiger.”
“Look here, Susy,” said Nat, “you stop that!” He came over and took the slim girl by her shoulders, and whirled her suddenly out into the centre of the room. “You and me,” continued Nat, “are brother and sister, ain’t we?”
“Yes, Nat, yes. Oh, my word; ’ow you sets my ’eart a-thumping.”
“Stop talking, and listen to me. I want to say something.”
“Well, well.”
“Will yer stop talking? I’ll shake the breath out of yer if yer don’t. Now, then, you listen. Oh, you poor good-for-nothing, you poor small good-for-nothing bit of a thin soul, you belong to me, I s’pose, and I must stick to yer. I’m yer brother, and I must hold on to yer till you gets a husband of some sort. But look yere, Susy, ef yer mentions Jill Robinson’s name agen to me, whether you speaks for Jill, or agen Jill, it’s all the same, I’ll leave yer. I’ll leave Lunnon and I’ll go where you can’t find me. I’ll tell you a thing about Jill now, and then she’ll be atween us not as ef she were dead, for we can speak of our dead, but as if she had never lived, and never died. That’s how Jill is to be atween you and me, in all the days that are to come. There never wor a Jill. That’s how things are to be. Do you understand?”