And Ranny replied in a voice devoid of rancor: "He's a low swine. If we took him in I should have to build a pigsty at the bottom of the garden for him, and I can't afford it. Granville isn't big enough for him and me. And it wouldn't be big enough for him and you, neither. You'd be the first to come and ask me to chuck him out." He spoke low, for he heard the neighbors talking in the next garden.
"Fat lot you think of me!" she cried.
"It's you I am thinking of."
She rose from the table, dragging the cloth askew in her trailing, hysterical stagger. She lurched to the French window that, thrown back against the wall, opened onto the little garden. And she stood there, leaning against the long window and pressing her handkerchief to her mouth till the storm of her sobbing burst through.
The people in the next garden stopped talking.
"For God's sake," said Ranny, "shut that window."
He got up and shut it himself, moving her inert bulk aside gently for the purpose. And she stood against the wall and laid her face on it and cried.
And Ranny called upon the Lord in his helplessness.
He went and put his arm round her, and she thrust him from her, and then whimpered weakly:
"Wh—wh—wh—why are you so unkind to me?"