If I did not think that, I thought Madam Lizzie had been making acquaintance this afternoon with something else. “Drops!” as Mrs. Dyke called it.
“There I shall be to-morrow, at the old work, and you can both come and see me at it,” said Lizzie. “I’ll treat you more civilly, Mr. Johnny, than Polly Panken did.”
“But I say that your husband will not allow you to go,” I repeated to her.
“Ah, he’s in bed,” she laughed; “he can’t get out of it to stop me.”
“You are all on the wrong tack, Lizzie girl,” spoke up the aunt, severely. “If you don’t mind, it will land you in shoals and quicksands. How dare you think of running counter to what you know your husband’s wishes would be?”
She received this with a louder laugh than ever. “He will not know anything about it, Aunt Dyke. Unless Mr. Johnny Ludlow here should tell him. It would not make any difference to me if he did,” she concluded, with candour.
And as I felt sure it would not, I held my tongue.
By degrees, as the days went on, Roger got about again, and when I left London he was back at St. Bartholomew’s. Other uncanny things had happened to me during this visit of mine, but not one of them brought with it so heavy a weight as the thought of poor Roger Bevere and his blighted life.
“His health may get all right if he will give up drinking,” were the last words Pitt said to me. “He has promised to do so.”