“’Pon my word,” he cried, “I seem to be surrounded by lunatics. Nobody’s got a particle of sense, so far as I can ascertain, excepting myself. No wonder I can’t manage matters as I should like. But, putting all that on one side, what I want now is another interview with her.”
“Judging by what she said after you left, you’re not likely to get it.”
“Look here, my girl. It was your own mother’s suggestion at the start, and she won’t be best pleased if you make yourself a stumbling-block. She, for some reason, seems to have got tired of me living in her house at Greenwich, and it was her idea I should marry well, and settle down somewhere else. Apart from which, I’ve arrived at a time of life when I need a woman’s care and good feeding, and enough money in my pocket to stand treat to friends after they’ve stood treat to me.” He spoke distinctly. “I’m going to knock at that door over there presently, and you’ve got to let me in, and you can stand by and listen whilst I say a few words, and put it all on a proper footing.”
“But she hates the very sight of you.”
“The sort of sensation,” he declared, “that can soon be turned to love.”
Mr. Hards thought it wiser, on finding himself outside the door of the restaurant, to give a sharp double knock. He smiled contentedly on hearing young Mrs. Crowther’s voice call out: “It’s all right, Ethel. Only the postman. I’ll answer him!” She opened the door, and faced him with a look of expectancy that at once vanished.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” he said, taking off his hat, “but I’ve been speaking my mind to that young fellow, and he asked me to call back and apologise on his behalf. I never noticed what he’d been up to, altering that date; it wanted a lady’s sharpness and a lady’s intelligence to detect that. What he wants me to say is he acted on the impulse of the moment.”
“He’d better give up acting altogether,” she remarked. “Did you really know my husband well, or was it all gas?”
“Didn’t I never tell you about that affair poor Crowther and me had with a bobby down near the London Docks one night in November? A fine chap,” went on Hards reminiscently, “if ever there was one. The way he could put up his dooks whenever there was trouble about! I seldom met a fellow who was his equal. He was what I call a manly man. When they told me he’d gone and left you a widow I cried like a child, I did.”
“I was upset at the time,” remarked Mrs. Crowther, “but it soon wore off.”