"You wouldn't do anything under a hundred, you wouldn't. Good job for me they don't double the amount.... Easy does it, Juliar—only a bit of my fun!" For Miss Hawkins, even as a woman stung by a cruel insult, had shown her flashing eyes, heightened colour, and panting bosom at the bar-opening as before. Mr. Wix seemed gratified. "Pity you don't flare up oftener, Juliar," said he. "You've no idea what a much better woman you look. Damn it, but you do!"
The woman made an effort, and choked her anger. "God forgive you, Wix!" said she, and fell back out of sight. Michael thought he heard her sob. He was not too young to understand this little drama, which took less time to act than to tell.
The convict had lost the thread of his examination, and had to hark back. Why was it, Mrs. Prichard had gone away into the country?... Oh, the house had fallen down, had it? But, then, how came Mrs. Wardle to be living in it still? Because, said Michael, it was only the wall fell off of the front, and now Mr. Bartlett he'd made all that good, and Mrs. Prichard was only kep' out by the damp. Did Mrs. Wardle really not know where Mrs. Prichard was? She had not told Michael, that was all he could say. Old Mo he'd never slept out of the house, only the family. And they was coming back soon now. Was old Mo an invalid, who never went out? "No fear!" said Michael. "He's all to rights, only a bit oldish, like. He spends the afternoons round at The Sun, and then goes home to supper." The interview ended with a present of half-a-bull to Micky from the convict, which the boy seemed to stickle at accepting. But he took it, and it strengthened his resolution not to turn informer, which was probably Mr. Wix's object.
He came away with an impression that Miss Hawkins had said:—"The boy's lying. How could the front-wall of a house fall down?" But he had heard no more and was glad to come away. He went back to his Aunt Betsy and cooked his chop under her tutelage. What a time he had been away, said she!
If Micky had remembered word for word the whole of this interview, he might have had misgivings of the effect of one thing he had said unawares. It was his reference to Uncle Mo's absence at The Sun during the late afternoon. Manifestly, it left the house in Mr. Wix's imagination untenanted, during some two hours of the day, except by Aunt M'riar, and the children perhaps. And what did they matter?
"You're mighty wise, Juliar, about the party of the house and the fifty-pun' reward." So said the convict when the woman came back, after seeing that Micky had crossed the wall unmolested by authority. "Folk ain't in any such a hurry to get a man hanged when they know what'll happen if they fail of doing it. Not even for fifty pound!"
"What will happen?"
"Couldn't say to a nicety. But she would stand a tidy chance of getting ripped up, next opportunity." He seemed pleased at his expression of this fact, as he took the first pulls at a fresh pipe, on the window-seat with his boots against the shutter and a grip of interlaced fingers behind his close-cut head for support. Why in Heaven's name does the released gaol-bird crop his hair? One would have thought the first instinct of regained freedom would have been to let it grow.
Miss Hawkins looked at him without admiration. "I often wonder," said she, "at the many risks I run to shelter you, for you're a bloody-minded knave, and that's the truth. It was a near touch but I might have lost my licence, last time."
"The Beaks were took with your good looks, Juliar. They're good judges of a fine woman. An orphan you was, too, and the mourning sooted you, prime!" He looked lazily at her, puffing—not without admiration, of a sort. Her resentment seemed to gratify him more than any subserviency. He continued:—"Well, nobody can say I haven't offered to make an honest woman of you, Juliar."