lled Mrs. Minto. "Joe! Come upstairs.
Don't get quarrelling like that. Ought to be ashamed of yourself. Come
upstairs!" She looked over the rails at her husband, like a sparrow on a
twig. He was a flight below. "Come up here!"

There was a fresh outburst from Mrs. Clancy.

"You put your 'usband to bed, Mrs. Minto. Pore woman! Pore soul! Fancy
'aving a thing like that for a 'usband! 'Usband, indeed! A great noisy
drunkard, a great beastly elephant, boozing all his money away. Drunken
fool, stamping about...."

"You shut your mouth!" bawled dad, thickly. "You shut your mouth. See?
When I want.... You shut your bloody jaw. See?"

"Joe!" called Mrs. Minto, urgently, a mean little slip peering over the
bannisters.

"Joe!" mimicked Mrs. Clancy. "You take him to bed, Mrs. Minto. Take his
boots off. He's not safe. He's a danger, that's what he is. I shall tell
the police, Mr. Minto. It's got to come. You got to stop it. I shall
tell the police. I will, I swear it...."

Mr. Minto retorted. His retort provoked Mrs. Clancy to rebuke. The
quarrel was suddenly intensified. It became rougher. Even Sally was
excited, and her hands were clasped together. Mr. Minto lost his temper.
He became mad. A fierce brutality seized him in its unmanageable grip.
They heard him give a kind of frenzied cry of passion, saw him raise his
hands, heard a hurried scuffle at the foot of the stairs, where the
Clancys, both alarmed, drew back towards their room. And then the rattle
of an arm against a rail, a slither, a bumping, and a low thud. Dad,
overbalancing in his rage, had pitched and fallen headlong down the
stairs. Mrs. Minto and Sally set up a thin screaming. The gas flickered
and burned steadily again. A shriek came from Mrs. Clancy. It was
repeated. Mr. Minto lay quite still in a confused heap in the lower
passage.

iii

Dad was dead. It was the end of that stage in Sally's life. After the
funeral, Sally and her mother were quite without money. Everything was
so wretched and unforeseen that the two were lost in this miserable new
aspect of poverty and improvidence. For a time Mrs. Perce was good to
them, and Mrs. Clancy would have been the same if Mrs. Minto had not
stared through her as through a pane of glass. But when that was done,
and the funeral was over, they had nothing. Together they sat in their
bare room above the noisy traffic of Hornsey Road, not speaking much,
but all the time turning and turning in their heads all poss