"Very well, sir. You know your own business best, though Mrs. Marlow did say as how you would be permanent. Without that, I shouldn't have gone out of my way to give you our own best room, and to wear my health, which is not too good, out in making you comfortable. But then, Mrs. Marlow was evidently mistook all round, for she said you would keep respectable hours and act as such."
Whereupon Jimmy lost his temper, paid her a week in lieu of notice, and went straight back to Lalage, who received him with delight. "So you haven't changed your mind at the last moment, as you would have done if you had been wise, and good and," she laughed mischievously, "Grierson-like."
"All I care about is being good to you, sweetheart," he answered. "But why do you say 'Grierson-like'?"
She looked at him critically, her head a little on one side. "Because you're two men—James Grierson, who is stodgy and respectable and ought to marry what the other Griersons call a good girl, that is one with money; and Jimmy, who is awfully sweet and unselfish, just the opposite to James. Just now, you're Jimmy, the nice side of you is uppermost; but some day it may be the other way about and then you'll run off and leave poor Lalage."
He flushed, and tried to draw her to him. "Never, never," he declared. "I shall always stick to you. Who else have I got?"
She shook her head. "You've got your own people, always, ready to have you, when you'll be one of them; whilst I'm all alone, and only Lalage, the girl you met by chance in Oxford Street."
Her words reawakened his curiosity as to her past. Twice before he had tried to learn her story, but now, as on those occasions, she baffled his questions.
"I am Lalage Penrose, that's all. I was a fool, and I've paid for my folly, and there's nothing else worth telling."
"Still, I should like to hear," he persisted.