, following fiddlers on
their rounds, watching navvies dig a drain, with a frank, sensuous
delight in the sights and sounds of the streets, an inheritance from
Jonah's years of vagabondage. Then the street-arabs fell on him,
annoyed by his new clothes and immense white collar, and at the end of
the third week he reached home after dark with a cut on his forehead
and spattered with mud.

The next day Jonah called on Clara to make some other arrangements.
His tone was brusque, and Clara noticed with surprise that he was
inclined to blame her for Ray's mishap. He seemed to forget everything
when it was a question of his son. But all of the Duchess in Clara
came to the surface in her annoyance, and she suggested that the
lessons had better come to an end. Absorbed in his egotistic feelings,
Jonah looked up in surprise, and his anger vanished. He saw that he
had offended her, and apologized. Then he remembered what had brought
him. His overpowering desire to see this woman had surprised him like
the first symptoms of an illness. He had not seen her for three weeks,
and in the increased flow of business at the Silver Shoe had half
forgotten his amazing emotions as one forgets a powerful dream. Women,
he repeated, were worse than drink for taking a man's mind off his work.

In his experience he had observed with some curiosity that drink and
women were alike in throwing men off their balance. Drink,
fortunately, had no power over him. Beer only fuddled his brain, and
he looked on its effect with the curious dislike women look on smoking,
blind to its fascinations. As for women, Ada was the only one he had
ever been on intimate terms with, and, judging by his sensations,
people who talked about love were either fools or liars. True, he had
heard Chook talking like a fool about Pinkey, swearing that he couldn't
live without her, but thought naturally that he lied. And they had
quarrelled so fiercely over the colour of her hair, that for years each
looked the other way when they met in the street. But as he looked at
Clara again, something vibrated within him, and he was conscious of
nothing but a desire to look at her and hear her speak.

"My idea was to buy a piano, an' then yer could give Ray 'is lessons at
'ome," he said.

"That is the only way out of the difficulty," said Clara.

Jonah thought awhile, and made up his mind with a snap.

"Could yer come with me now, an' pick me a piano? I can tell a boot by