He spoke in English now; they always spoke English to each other when they were alone together, though they seemed quite equally at their ease in both languages; they also stammered equally in both. They stammered when they were at all excited, or earnest, or tired, and very often when they were not. When they were talking, these hiatuses were often the only opportunities their companions had of getting in a word edgeways.
Betty thought it improbable that Luli would lend any such sum.
'You know, Tommy, we had ten from him last month. He won't miss it if we don't remind him, but it would be silly to bother him again just yet.'
'Oh, all right. But I'm afraid we've rather got to get some somehow. We've spent an awful lot lately. Why did we have lunch to-day? We didn't want it.'
'Who's been bothering?'
From long experience Betty caught the issue.
'The chap I get paints from. I—I told him he'd got to wait; he c-cut up rough; said he'd waited long enough.'
The stutter, becoming pronounced, showed Tommy a little stirred.
'Well——' Betty's tone was depressed. There was an intonation of melancholy, however, in general in the Crevequers' stammering speech—a melancholy that was on the borderland of laughter, and stuttered into it as a man stumbles unawares into puddles, walking along a wet path. Miss Crevequer, quite suddenly, stumbled into one now, for no apparent reason, and dragged Tommy after her. 'Well'—Betty regained, as it were, dry ground—'let's give him this week's rent; and by next week something will have turned up. You can win some at cards, can't you? It's a pity I've got no job just now. At least, it's rather fun really, and we'll go to the theatre to-night.'
Tommy nodded. The proposition seemed a matter of course; no incongruity struck either. There was, in fact, no incongruity; it was very simple: the payment of debts would have been an indulgence quite beyond their means; going to the theatre was one within them. The Crevequers could only afford cheap pleasures.