p the stairs. He made no attempts to justify his late arrival
with tales of goblin accidents as Alfie was wont to do. He did not
ascribe the cracked egg appearance of his bowler hat to the onset of a
baker's barrow. He seemed so far indifferent to the unfinished look of
his clothes as not to bother to lay the blame on the butcher's boy. Her
mother merely said:

"Oh, it's you?"

To which Mr. Raeburn replied: "Yes, Flo, it's me," and began to sing
"Ta-ra-ra--boom--de--ay."

Even Ruby O'Connor, who, in earlier days at Hagworth Street, used to
quell Alfie with terrible threats of a father's vengeance, gave them up
as ineffective; for the bland and cheerful Charlie, losing the while not
a morsel of blandness or cheerfulness, was fast becoming an object of
contemptuous toleration in his own house. He was a weak and unsuccessful
man, fond of half-pints and tales of his own prowess, with little to
recommend him to his family except an undeniable gift of humorous
description. Yet, even with this, he possessed no imagination. He was
accustomed to treat the world as he would have treated a spaniel. "Poor
old world," he would say in pitying intention; "poor old world." He
would pat the universe on its august head as a pedagogue slaps a
miniature globe in the schoolroom. He never expected anything from the
world, which was just as well, for he certainly never received very
much. To his wife's occasional inquiry of amazed indignation, "Why ever
did I come to marry you?" he would answer:

"I don't know, Floss. Because you wanted to, I reckon."

"I never wanted to," she would protest.

"Well, you didn't," he would say. "Some people acts funny."

"That's quite right."

Hers was the last word: his, however, the pint of four ale that drowned
it.

Jenny at this stage in her life was naturally incapable of grasping the
fact of her mother throwing herself away in matrimony; but she was able
to ponder the queer result that, however much her mother might be
annoyed by Charlie, she did not seem able to get rid of him.

Alfie, with his noise and clumping boots, was an equally unpleasant
appendage to her life, but for Alfie she was responsible. In whatever
way children came about, it was not to be supposed they happened
involuntarily like bedtime or showers of rain. Moreover, mystery hung
heavy over their arrival. Edie and Alfie would giggle in corners, look
at each other with oddly lighted eyes, and blush when certain subjects
arose