“What?”
Davy was about to light his pipe, but he flung away the match.
“Have you never thought of it?” said Lovibond, “That when a husband deserts his wife like this he throws her in the way of—”
“Not Nelly, no,” said Davy, promptly. “I’ll lave that with her, anyway. Any other woman perhaps, but Nelly—never! She’s as pure as new milk, and no beast milk neither. Nelly going wrong, eh? Well, well! I’d like to see the man that would... I may have treated her bad... but I’d like to see the man, I say...”
Then there was another shrieking whistle from the steamer. Willie Quarrie called up at the window and gesticulated wildly from the lawn outside.
“Coming, boy, coming,” Davy shouted back, and looking at his watch, he said, “Four minutes and a half—time enough yet.”
Then they left the hotel and moved toward the ferry steps. As they walked Davy begun to laugh. “Well, well!” he said, and he laughed again. “Aw, to think, to think!” he said, and he laughed once more. But with every fresh outbreak of his laughter the note of his voice lost freshness.
Lovibond saw his opportunity, and yet could not lay hold of it, so cruel at that moment seemed the only weapon that would be effectual. But Davy himself thrust in between him and his timid spirit. With another hollow laugh, as if half ashamed of keeping up the deception to the last, yet convinced that he alone could see through it, he said, “No news of the girl in the church, mate, eh? Gone home, I suppose?”
“Not yet,” said Lovibond.
“No?” said Davy.