Deleah was silent.
"Or for you?"
Deleah laughed with her colour high: "I would not marry Reggie Forcus if he were stuffed with gold, mama."
Mrs. Day turned away to wait upon the untidy little servant girl from over the way whose family had suddenly "run out of vinegar."
Her eyes had been sharp enough to see on which of her daughters' faces it was that Reginald Forcus's gaze dwelt; she had divined the attraction which drew the pleasure-loving, much sought young man to sit patiently for hours in the evening, watching the girls at their work. She looked, drearily, the vinegar being measured and the customer gone, between the intervening biscuit tins and pickle jars into the street. She had begun to cherish a dream that if not Bessie it might be her pretty Deleah who, through Reggie, should find a way out.
"Supposing he really wanted to marry either of us you would not surely like it, would you, mama?"
And Mrs. Day was obliged to admit with a kind of shame that she would.
"That silly, irresponsible, baby of a young man; without two ideas in his head!"
But the mother knew if his head was empty, his pocket was not. He might not be clever, or have much stability of character, but oh, how many things which made life pleasant he possessed! She who had had them, and had lost them, was not one to underrate the value of worldly goods.
"I suppose the end will be Bessie must marry Mr. Gibbon," she said, with an effort at resignation and putting away from her unwillingly the golden dream. "I should not blame Bessie," she went on judicially. "He is a good and steady-going man, although so very quiet. Have you noticed, my dear, how very quiet Mr. Gibbon has become?"