“We must sell something, that’s all,” says Mr. Conway, with a kind of defiant recklessness in his manner.
She gives him a quick glance, looks at her child, and then closes the knife and fork upon her plate.
He does not notice that she has eaten about as much as would serve a bird for a meal; neither does he appear to remark that she drinks water. He, at all events, keeps the beer-jug at his elbow, from which, in a very short time, he pours out the last glass.
The child alone continues eating.
“I don’t know what’s to be done!” he exclaims in a voice of suppressed anger, pushing his chair from the table. “The people have dropped me for that French quack, in Mornington Street. I saw three carriages at his door when I passed just now. I ought never to have left the old shop. I did well there.”
“You would do well here if you gave yourself a chance,” says Dolly. “The lady who called yesterday evening came again this morning. Martha told me she looked annoyed when she heard you were out. She will go to some one else, I suppose, now.”
“Let her!” he calls out. “How am I to know that people are coming to me after dark? Week after week passes, and they don’t come, and—am I going to hang about here a whole night, in the hope of a patient turning up? Why didn’t she leave word at what hour she meant to call to-day? I went out to collect some money, and you know it, though I can guess what is in your thoughts. But it’s false—there’s my hand on it!”
He let his hand fall heavily on the table, and stared at his wife. She slightly turned from him, and looked through the window. He left the table and began to pace the room. The child, having emptied her plate and wanting something to play with, had taken the shilling Holdsworth had given her from her pocket, and tried to make it spin on the cloth.
“What’s that Nelly has got there?” said Mr. Conway.
“A shilling,” answered Dolly.