“I don’t feel like going to bed.”
“Nonsense,” he said coldly.
She got up, a little sulkily, and went into her room. He smiled when he heard her lock the door loudly.
The next few days passed without incident. Mildred settled down in her new surroundings. When Philip hurried off after breakfast she had the whole morning to do the housework. They ate very simply, but she liked to take a long time to buy the few things they needed; she could not be bothered to cook anything for her dinner, but made herself some cocoa and ate bread and butter; then she took the baby out in the gocart, and when she came in spent the rest of the afternoon in idleness. She was tired out, and it suited her to do so little. She made friends with Philip’s forbidding landlady over the rent, which he left with Mildred to pay, and within a week was able to tell him more about his neighbours than he had learned in a year.
“She’s a very nice woman,” said Mildred. “Quite the lady. I told her we was married.”
“D’you think that was necessary?”
“Well, I had to tell her something. It looks so funny me being here and not married to you. I didn’t know what she’d think of me.”
“I don’t suppose she believed you for a moment.”
“That she did, I lay. I told her we’d been married two years—I had to say that, you know, because of baby—only your people wouldn’t hear of it, because you was only a student”—she pronounced it stoodent—“and so we had to keep it a secret, but they’d given way now and we were all going down to stay with them in the summer.”
“You’re a past mistress of the cock-and-bull story,” said Philip.