e
Crevequers were absurdly like each other just now.

'Eighty out,' Betty repeated, looking away from that other hurt. 'I
can't--I can't understand----'

Unexpectedly, her voice broke on the words. Tears took her; she leaned
her forehead on her hand. She was horribly tired of talking; she had
talked all day--talked nonsense, stammering over it. She could not talk
any more; the end of a tether often comes quite suddenly so.

Tommy looked at her gloomily, under his brows. Betty never cried; tears
no more belonged to her than to him. When they had been children, one
had hardly ever cried without the other. Tommy looked at Betty's tears
now, speculating on her 'mental standpoint,' and on how far she divined
his.

'What's wrong?' he asked. 'Anything ... I can do...?'

If it was merely the mental standpoint, he knew that she would not word
it; so he exposed himself to her answer, unafraid. They had never failed
each other by betraying such trust. The completeness of his trust
enabled one to watch the other's tears without wincing.

'N-nothing,' said Betty, and her voice, in its weariness, caught upon a
laugh, while her eyes were still wet. 'Only--only I think I've been
talking too much to-day--and that's so tiring.' (It would seem that the
Crevequers must lead an exhausting life.) 'And I met the baby Venables
sitting outside a church, and it talked about beagling; you run after a
hare till you catch it--did you know? It's so jolly. Thinking of that
made me feel tired, I expect. And have you been stealing eighty out of
the rent? Because I haven't.'

She was counting the pence again, laying them in precarious piles on the
arm of her chair.

Tommy had gone to the window, and stood looking out into the soft
darkness and the noisy street below, his hands in his pockets.

Those tears had somehow a little loosed his speech.

'The beastly thing,' he said drearily, 'is how everything is such a
bore, and how it will go on always, just like this.'

Betty did not need him to tell her that that was a bad thing--one of
them, but not the chief. She said:

'I know.'

'No; but you can't quite know,' Tommy told her, 'because--because for
you it's rather different.'

The quick movement of Betty's hand sent the pence scattering on to the
floor, ringing on the bare stone.

'There'll be more than eighty out now,' she said. 'And it's not
different; it's quite the same.'

Tommy turned and faced her, pondering, looking at her fro