“Well, I’m glad you’ve turned over a new leaf,” said Mrs. Pinner. “It ain’t afore it was time, I’m sure. I’ll go up and fetch the baby down.”
“What for?” demanded her husband, shortly.
“So as it can see a little of you too,” said his wife. “Up to the present it calls every man it sees ‘farver.’ It ain’t its fault, pore little dear.”
Mr. Pinner, still intent on footsteps, grumbled something beneath his breath, and the baby being awakened out of its first sleep and brought downstairs, they contemplated each other for some time with offensive curiosity.
Until next morning Mr. Pinner’s odd reasons for his presence sufficed, but when he sat still after breakfast and showed clearly his intention to remain, his wife insisted upon others less insulting to her intelligence. Mr. Pinner, prefacing his remarks with an allusion to a life-long abhorrence of red whiskers, made a clean breast of it.
“It served him right,” said his wife, judicially, ‘but it’ll be six months for you if they nab you, Charlie. You’ll ’ave to make up your mind to a quiet spell indoors with me and baby till the ship sails.”
Mr. Pinner looked at his son and heir disparagingly, and emitted a groan.
“He ’ad no witnesses,” he remarked, “except a boy, that is, and ’e didn’t look the sort to be fond o’ policemen.”
“You can’t tell by looks,” replied his wife, in whose brain a little plan to turn this escapade to good account was slowly maturing. “You mustn’t get nabbed for my sake.”
“I won’t get nabbed for my own sake,” rejoined Mr. Pinner, explicitly. “I wonder whether it’s got into the papers?”