“Yes, dear,” said his wife.
Mr. Cox leaned back in his chair and, wiping his pen on the blotting-paper, gazed in a speculative fashion round the room. “Have you any money?” he inquired.
For reply his wife rummaged in her pocket and after a lengthy search produced a bunch of keys, a thimble, a needle-case, two pocket-handkerchiefs, and a halfpenny. She put this last on the table, and Mr. Cox, whose temper had been mounting steadily, threw it to the other end of the room.
“I can’t help it,” said Mrs. Cox, wiping her eyes. “I’m sure I’ve done all I could to keep a home together. I can’t even raise money on anything.”
Mr. Cox, who had been glancing round the room again, looked up sharply.
“Why not?” he inquired.
“The broker’s man,” said Mrs. Cox, nervously; “he’s made an inventory of everything, and he holds us responsible.”
Mr. Cox leaned back in his chair. “This is a pretty state of things,” he blurted, wildly. “Here have I been walking my legs off looking for work, any work so long as it’s honest labour, and I come back to find a broker’s man sitting in my own house and drinking up my beer.”
He rose and walked up and down the room, and Mrs. Cox, whose nerves were hardly equal to the occasion, slipped on her bonnet and announced her intention of trying to obtain a few necessaries on credit. Her husband waited in indignant silence until he heard the front door close behind her, and then stole softly upstairs to have a look at the fell destroyer of his domestic happiness.
Mr. Piper, who was already very tired of his imprisonment, looked up curiously as he heard the door pushed open, and discovered an elderly gentleman with an appearance of great stateliness staring at him. In the ordinary way he was one of the meekest of men, but the insolence of this stare was outrageous. Mr. Piper, opening his mild blue eyes wide, stared back. Whereupon Mr. Cox, fumbling in his vest pocket, found a pair of folders, and putting them astride his nose, gazed at the pseudo-broker’s man with crushing effect.