'I'm not married if that's what you mean.'
'Then who—' said Miss Clomber, feeling that she had him now.
'My keep,' he said baldly. He thought they would go at that. But they sat tight. They had, as Miss Clomber said afterwards, a soul to save. They both realized how pleasant might be the earthly lot of one engaged in this heavenly occupation.
'Hah! You call a spade a spade, Mr. Reddin,' said Miss Clomber, with a frosty glance at Hazel; 'you are not, as our dear Browning has it, "mealy mouthed".'
'In the breast of a true woman,' said Amelia authoritatively, as a fishmonger might speak of fish, 'is no room for blame.'
'True woman be damned!'
Miss Clomber saw that for to-day the cause was lost.
At this point Miss Amelia uttered a piercing yell. The hedgehog, encouraged by being left to itself, and by the slight dusk that had begun to gather in the northerly rooms of Undern—where night came early—had begun to creep about. Surreptitiously guided by Hazel's foot, it had crept under Amelia's skirt and laid its cold inquiring head on her ankle, thinly clad for conquest.
Hazel went off into peals of laughter, and Miss Amelia hated her more than before.
Vessons, in the kitchen, shook his head.