Bertha began: "I know something you don't know."
You listened. You couldn't help listening. You simply had to know. It was no use to say you didn't believe a word of it. Inside you, secretly, you knew it was true. You were frightened. You trembled and went hot and cold by turns, and somehow that was how you knew it was true; almost as if you had known all the time.
"Oh, shut up! I don't want to hear about it."
"Oh, don't you? You did a minute ago."
"Of course I did, when I didn't know. Who wouldn't? I don't want to know any more."
"I like that. After I've told you everything. What's the good of putting your fingers in your ears now?"
There was that day; and there was the next day when she was sick of
Bertha. On the third day Bertha went back to Woodford Bridge.
V.
It was dreadful and at the same time funny when you thought of Mr. Batty and Mr. Propart with their little round hats and their black coats and their stiff, dignified faces. And there was Uncle Edward and his whiskers. It couldn't be true.
Yet all true things came like that, with a queer feeling, as if you remembered them.