Mr. Abbott, wasting no more words, departed, leaving the unwelcome visitor behind him. Andrew Brumm came in again from outside, where he had stood, out of delicacy, feeling thankful that his rent was all right. It was pinching work; but Andrew was beginning to learn that debt pinches the mind, more than hunger pinches the body.
"Comrade," whispered he, grasping Cross's hand, "it's all along of them Bankes's. The women buy their fal-lals and their finery, and the weekly payments to 'em must be kept up, whether or no, for fear Bankes's should let out on't to us, and ask us for the money. Of course the rent and other things gets behind. Half the women round us are knee-deep in Bankes's books."
"Why couldn't you have told me this before?" demanded Cross, in his astonishment.
"It's not my province to interfere with other men's wives," was Brumm's sensible answer.
"Where's she got to?" cried Jacob, looking round for his wife. "I'll come to the bottom of this. Nine weeks' rent owing; and her salving me up that it was only three!"
Jacob might well say, "Where's she got to?" Mrs. Cross had glided down Honey Fair into the first friendly door that happened to be open. That was Mrs. Carter's. "For mercy's sake, let's stop here a minute, Elizabeth Carter!" exclaimed she. "We have got the bums in!"
Mrs. Carter was rubbing up some brass candlesticks. Work ran short with her that week, and therefore she spent it in cleaning, which was her notion of taking holiday; scrubbing and scouring from morning till night. She turned round and stared at Mrs. Cross, who, with white face and gasping breath, had sunk down upon a chair.
"What on earth's the matter?"
"Abbott has brought it out to my husband that I owes nine weeks' rent, and he's telling him about Bankes's, and now he has gone and put a bum into the house!"
"More soft you, to have had to do with Bankes's!" was the sympathy offered by Mrs. Carter. "You couldn't expect nothing less."