“If only I could put out a bit of supper for him somewhere where he would get it! And his money, too? I hate to feel it’s in there.”
“Don’t you make any mistake—he’ll come back for that,” said Bunting, with decision.
But Mrs. Bunting shook her head. She knew better. “Now,” she said, “you go off up to bed. It’s no use us sitting up any longer.”
And Bunting acquiesced.
She ran down and got him a bedroom candle—there was no gas in the little back bedroom upstairs. And then she watched him go slowly up.
Suddenly he turned and came down again. “Ellen,” he said, in an urgent whisper, “if I was you I’d take the chain off the door, and I’d lock myself in—that’s what I’m going to do. Then he can sneak in and take his dirty money away.”
Mrs. Bunting neither nodded nor shook her head. Slowly she went downstairs, and there she carried out half of Bunting’s advice. She took, that is, the chain off the front door. But she did not go to bed, neither did she lock herself in. She sat up all night, waiting. At half-past seven she made herself a cup of tea, and then she went into her bedroom.
Daisy opened her eyes.
“Why, Ellen,” she said, “I suppose I was that tired, and slept so sound, that I never heard you come to bed or get up—funny, wasn’t it?”
“Young people don’t sleep as light as do old folks,” Mrs. Bunting said sententiously.