“But——”
“Did you hear me, man? Go!” the landlady thundered. And a glance of her eye was sufficient to bring the runner to heel like a scolded hound. “Go, and shut the door after you,” she continued, with sharpness. “I’ll have no eavesdropping in my house, prerogative or no prerogative!”
When he was gone she showed a single spark of mercy. She went to the fire and proceeded to mend it noisily, as if it were the one thing in the world to be attended to. She put on wood, and swept the hearth, and made a to-do with it. True, the respite was short; a minute or two at most. But when the landlady had done, and turned her attention to the girl, Henrietta had moved to the window, so that only her back was visible. Even then, for quite a long minute Mrs. Gilson stood, with arms akimbo and pursed lips, reading the lines of the girl’s figure and considering her, as if even her rugged bosom knew pity. And in the end it was Henrietta who spoke—humbly, alas! now, and in a voice almost inaudible.
“Will you leave me, please?” she said.
“I will,” Mrs. Gilson answered gruffly. “But on one understanding, miss—and I’ll have it plain. It must be all over. If you are satisfied he is a rascal—he has four children—well and good. But I’ll have no goings on with such in my house, and no making two bites of a cherry! Here’s a bit of paper I’ll put on the table.”
“I am satisfied,” Henrietta whispered.
Under the woman’s blunt words she shook as under blows.
But Mrs. Gilson seemed to pay little heed to her feelings.
“Very good, very good!” she answered. “But I’ll leave the paper all the same. It’s but a bit of a handbill that fool of a runner brought with him, but ’twill show you what kind of a poor thing your Joe was. Just a spouter, that got drunk on his own words and shot a poor inoffensive gentleman in a shop! Shame on him for a little dirty murder, if ever there was one.”
“Oh, please go! please go!” Henrietta wailed.