"Not that I make any charge—" he had concluded.
"Charge!" Oleron had cried.
"I 'ave my idears of things, as I don't doubt you 'ave yours—"
"Ideas—mine!" Oleron had cried wrathfully, immediately dropping his voice as heads had appeared at windows of the square. "Look you here, my man; you've an unwholesome mind, which probably you can't help, but a tongue which you can help, and shall! If there is a breath of this repeated …"
"I'll not be talked to on my own doorstep like this by anybody,…"
Barrett had blustered….
"You shall, and I'm doing it …"
"Don't you forget there's a Gawd above all, Who 'as said…"
"You're a low scandalmonger!…"
And so forth, continuing badly what was already badly begun. Oleron had returned wrathfully to his own house, and thenceforward, looking out of his windows, had seen Barrett's face at odd times, lifting blinds or peering round curtains, as if he sought to put himself in possession of Heaven knew what evidence, in case it should be required of him.
The unfortunate occurrence made certain minor differences in Oleron's domestic arrangements. Barrett's tongue, he gathered, had already been busy; he was looked at askance by the dwellers of the square; and he judged it better, until he should be able to obtain other help, to make his purchases of provisions a little farther afield rather than at the small shops of the immediate neighbourhood. For the rest, housekeeping was no new thing to him, and he would resume his old bachelor habits….