"I have given all the grace I can give," replied Mr. Abbott, a hard, surly man. "You must either pay, or turn out: I don't care which."
"I'll pay you as soon as I am in work, sir; you may count upon it. As to turning out, sir, where could I turn to? You'd not let me take out my furniture, and we can't sit down in the street, as Fisher's wife is doing."
Mr. Abbott turned to the door. When he came back, a man was with him. "I must trouble you to give this man house-room for a few days. As you won't go out, he must stop in, to see that your goods stop in."
Cross's spirit rose within him. "It's a hard way to treat a man, sir! I have lived under you for years, and you have had your rent regular."
"Regular!" exclaimed the landlord. "I have had more trouble to get it from your wife, since Bankes's came to Helstonleigh, than from anybody else in Honey Fair."
Cross did not understand this. He was too much absorbed by the point in question to ask an explanation. "There's only three weeks owing to you, sir, and——"
"Three weeks!" interrupted Mr. Abbott; "there are nine weeks owing to me. Nine weeks to-day."
Jacob Cross stood confounded. "Who says there's nine weeks?" asked he.
"I say so. Your wife can say so. Ask her."
But Mrs. Cross, with a scared face and white lips, whisked through the door and hurried down Honey Fair. The explosion had come.