And tilting his hat on to the back of his head, he looked at the ceiling, as if in the hope of seeing James up there. But nothing of the kind.
'You say you've heard nothing of him,' he continued. 'You're quite sure? This isn't a little game he's playing off on me, in which you're taking a hand?'
'Mr. FitzHoward, I'm not that sort of person. I've not heard one word; nor half a one. He came home that night after he'd been doing that sleep at the Aquarium--well, he'd been drinking.'
'You'd have been drinking if you'd only just woke up after being asleep for thirty days.'
'No, Mr. FitzHoward, I should not; though I can quite understand what an awful feeling it must be. And how he can go wasting his life like that----'
'You don't call it wasting his life when he earns nearly a hundred pounds in a month?'
'It's the first I've heard of it if he did earn nearly a hundred pounds. He gave me the money to pay the rent, and five pounds to pay the bills, and another five pounds to buy the children and me some clothes--it's a lucky thing I didn't buy them, or I should have been penniless--and that's all the money I ever heard of. That was on the Sunday morning. He had on a suit of clothes which I'd never seen before, and in them he looked a perfect gentleman.'
'He's a gentleman to his finger-tips--when he likes.'
'When he chooses he's anything and everything. His equal I never knew or heard tell of. I'm not a superstitious woman, but it's sometimes my belief that he has dealings with those he didn't ought to.'
'I shouldn't be surprised.'