ent.

"What was the interesting topic?" he said cuttingly.

"Nothing at all!" said Tanny, nettled. "Why must you interfere?"

"Because I intend to," said Lilly.

And the two others fell apart, as if severed with a knife. Jim walked
rather sheepishly, as if cut out.

So they came at last past the canals to the wayside station: and at last
Jim's train came. They all said goodbye. Jim and Tanny were both waiting
for Lilly to show some sign of real reconciliation. But none came. He
was cheerful and aloof.

"Goodbye," he said to Jim. "Hope Lois will be there all right. Third
station on. Goodbye! Goodbye!"

"You'll come to Rackham?" said Jim, leaning out of the train.

"We should love to," called Tanny, after the receding train.

"All right," said Lilly, non-committal.

But he and his wife never saw Jim again. Lilly never intended to see
him: a devil sat in the little man's breast.

"You shouldn't play at little Jesus, coming so near to people, wanting
to help them," was Tanny's last word.

CHAPTER IX. LOW-WATER MARK

Tanny went away to Norway to visit her people, for the first time for
three years. Lilly did not go: he did not want to. He came to London
and settled in a room over Covent Garden market. The room was high up, a
fair size, and stood at the corner of one of the streets and the market
itself, looking down on the stalls and the carts and the arcade. Lilly
would climb out of the window and sit for hours watching the behaviour
of the great draught-horses which brought the mountains of boxes and
vegetables. Funny half-human creatures they seemed, so massive and
fleshy, yet so Cockney. There was one which could not bear donkeys,
and which used to stretch out its great teeth like some massive serpent
after every poor diminutive ass that came with a coster's barrow.
Another great horse could not endure standing. It would shake itself
and give little starts, and back into the heaps of carrots and broccoli,
whilst the driver went into a frenzy of rage.

There was always something to watch. One minute it was two great loads
of empty crates, which in passing had got entangled, and reeled, leaning
to fall disastrously. Then the drivers cursed and swore and dismounted
and stared at their jeopardised loads: till a thin fellow was persuaded
to scramble up the airy mountains of cages, like a monkey. And he
actually managed to put them to rights. Great sigh of relief when the
vans rocked out of the market.