Joey conducted her to the top of the basement stairs, and told her to listen. Within a few yards of them was the morning-room door, now standing ajar; and an intermittent flirtation in soft male and female tones could be heard going on inside. Picotee’s lips parted at thus learning the condition of things, and she leant against the stair-newel.
‘My? What’s the matter?’ said Joey.
‘If this is London, I don’t like it at all!’ moaned Picotee.
‘Well—I never see such a girl—fainting all over the stairs for nothing in the world.’
‘O—it will soon be gone—it is—it is only indigestion.’
‘Indigestion? Much you simple country people can know about that! You should see what devils of indigestions we get in high life—eating ’normous great dinners and suppers that require clever physicians to carry ’em off, or else they’d carry us off with gout next day; and waking in the morning with such a splitting headache, and dry throat, and inward cusses about human nature, that you feel all the world like some great lord. However, now let’s go down again.’
‘No, no, no!’ said the unhappy maiden imploringly. ‘Hark!’
They listened again. The voices of the musician and poetess had changed: there was a decided frigidity in their tone—then came a louder expression—then a silence.
‘You needn’t be afeard,’ said Joey. ‘They won’t fight; bless you, they busts out quarrelling like this times and times when they’ve been over-friendly, but it soon gets straight with ’em again.’
There was now a quick walk across the room, and Joey and his sister drew down their heads out of sight. Then the room door was slammed, quick footsteps went along the hall, the front door closed just as loudly, and Christopher’s tread passed into nothing along the pavement.